LIBRARY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 
PAVIS 


ESSAYS  AND  STUDIES 


ESSAYS  AND  STUDIES 


$&ucaticrnal  anft  Citerarg 


BY 


BASIL  LANNEAU  GILDERSLEEVE 


N.    MURRAY 

MD.CCC-XC 


Six  hundred  copies  only  of  this  edition  are 
printed  for  sale  in  the  United  States. 

This  copy  is  No. 


PRESS  AND  BINDERY  OF  COPYRIGHT,  1890, 

ISAAC  FRIEDENWALD,  BALTIMORE.  BY  B.  L.  QILDERSLEEVE. 


Eight  of  the  papers  that  go  to  make  up  this 
volume  were  written  in  the  years  1867-1869,  by  a 
man  of  the  Old  South,  and  form  a  part  of  his  life 
long  work  for  the  furtherance  of  higher  education 
and  literary  development  among  the  Southern  people, 
with  whom  he  is  identified  by  birth,  by  feeling  and  by 
fortune.  Committed  to  the  Southern  Review,  under 
the  editorship  of  Messrs.  Bledsoe  and  Browne,  they 
went  into  retirement  with  the  withdrawal  of  that 
periodical  from  the  brave  but  hopeless  struggle  to 
keep  up  a  distinct  literary  life  in  the  Southern  States, 
and  from  that  retirement  they  are  now  brought  forth 
at  the  suggestion  and  with  the  active  aid  of  personal 
friends.  To  the  New  South  and  the  Old  North  alike 
they  will  be  as  if  they  had  never  been.  Three  of  the 
Essays  were  prepared  at  a  much  later  date  for  the 
Princeton  Review,  under  the  munificent  reign  of  Mr. 
Libbey.  To  these  papers  have  been  appended  by 
special  request  two  of  the  many  Occasional  Addresses 
.  for  which  the  author  of  the  Essays  and  Studies  is 
responsible. 


The  Educational  Essays  are  arranged  so  as  to 
set  forth  the  work  of  the  Classical  Scholar  in  the 
World,  in  the  College,  in  the  University,  in  the  Study, 
the  field  narrowing  until  the  confines  of  literary  form 
and  grammatical  science  are  reached.  The  Studies 
follow  the  chronological  order  of  their  subjects.  They 
are  all  re  published  substantially  as  they  were  written. 
Here  and  there  a  note  has  been  added,  to  be  distin 
guished  from  the  rest  by  the  initials  B.  L.  G.,  here 
and  there  a  blunder  corrected,  and  a  few,  very  few, 
intolerable  vivacities  suppressed,  but  the  partial  and 
harsh  judgments,  literary  and  other,  that  belonged  to 
the  period  quite  as  much  as  to  the  author  have  been 
allowed  to  stand  as  documents  of  the  time,  sometimes 
with,  usually  without  protest. 

The  readiness  with  which  the  volume  was  accepted 
in  advance  has  roused  the  zvriter  from  the  '  Oriental 
detachment'  which  he  has  long  sought  to  attain  in 
respect  of  his  works,  and  he  desires  to  express  his 
gratitude  for  the  many  indications  of  interest  and 
affection  which  the  projected  publication  has  elicited. 
While  seeing  the  book  through  the  press  he  has  been 
especially  cheered  and  aided  by  his  friend  and  col 
league,  Dr.  William  Hand  Browne,  whose  sympathy 
and  counsel  have  never  failed  him  from  the  days  of 
the  Southern  Review  to  the  present  time. 


Several  friends  have  expressed  the  wish  that  a 
little  series  of  studies  entitled  'On  the  Steps  of  the 
Bema '  should  be  included  in  this  collection,  but  both 
form  and  matter  of  those  slight  performances  de 
mand  a  decided  change  in  their  resurrection  body, 
and  as  a  fearless  publisher  has  offered  to  take  charge 
of  them  if  they  should  ever  be  reshaped,  it  is  not 
impossible  that  they  may  some  day  be  recalled  to  life. 


University  Club,  Baltimore, 
April  i,  1890. 


CONTENTS. 

EDUCATIONAL  ESSAYS : 

LIMITS  OF  CULTURE, 3 

CLASSICS  AND  COLLEGES,      43 

UNIVERSITY  WORK  IN  AMERICA  AND  CLASSICAL 

PHILOLOGY, 87 

GRAMMAR  AND  ^ESTHETICS, 127 

LITERARY  AND  HISTORICAL  STUDIES : 

THE  LEGEND  OF  VENUS, 161 

XANTHIPPE  AND  SOCRATES,      209 

APOLLONIUS  OF  TYANA 251 

LUCIAN,       299 

THE  EMPEROR  JULIAN 355 

PLATEN'S  POEMS, 401 

MAXIMILIAN  ;  His  TRAVELS  AND  His  TRAGEDY,  453 

OCCASIONAL  ADDRESSES, 497 


€00030 


LIMITS  OF  CULTURE 


LIMITS  OF  CULTURE. 

Towards  the  close  of  a  life  lengthened  out  far 
beyond  the  usual  span,  Dr.  Bigelow,1  who  is  intro 
duced  to  us  by  his  title-page  as  '  late  President  of 
the  American  Academy  of  Arts  and  Sciences  and 
late  a  Professor  in  Harvard  University  ',  has  favored 
the  world  from  the  oracular  centre  of  Boston  with  a 
volume  of '  Modern  Inquiries  ',  which  range  in  date 
from  the  respectable  antiquity  of  1812  to  1866. 
For  more  than  half  a  century,  then,  has  Dr.  Bigelow 
been  thinking  aloud,  or  at  all  events  giving  out  his 
views  about  thinking ;  and  the  book  has  been  cited 
as  a  remarkable  example  of  intellectual  vigor  pro 
longed  to  advanced  years.  With  his  professional 
essays  and  his  political  deliverances  we  have  nothing 
to  do,  but  what  concerns  us  immediately  in  the 
book  is  the  vivacious  ignorance  with  which  the  old 
gentleman  assails  the  study  of  the  classics ;  and 
even  that  would  not  rouse  us  if  it  were  not  an  indi- 

li.  Modern  Inquiries:  Classical,  Professional  and  Miscella 
neous.     By  Jacob  Bigelow,  M.  D.     Boston  :  1867. 

2.  The  Culture  demanded  by  Modern  Life  :  A  Series  of  Ad 
dresses  and  Arguments  on  the  Claims  of  Scientific  Education  ; 
with  an  Introduction  on  Mental  Discipline  in  Education.     By 
E.  L.  Youmans.     New  York  :   1867. 

3.  Inaugural  Address  delivered  to  the  University  of  St.  An 
drews,    Feb.    ist,  1867.     3y  John  Stuart  Mill,  Rector  of  the 
University. 


LIMITS   OF  GUI 


cation  of  the  co^^rted  movement  which  is  making 
against  ^  whole  scheme  of  higher  education.  In 
cw^n  an  onset  we  should  not  expect  to  see  so  aged 
a  warrior.  Old  men  are  generally  content  to  praise 
the  past,  but  here  we  have  one  who  is  evidently 
proud  that  '  he  has  been  swept  along  with  the  pro 
gress  of  the  age,  and  has  become  disciplined  in 
some  measure  to  replace  delightful  visions  with 
arduous  and  growing  realities.'  But  although  we 
accord  the  respect  that  is  due  to  an  old  age  which 
keeps  alive  its  sympathies  with  the  living  and  mov 
ing  present,  and  calls  for  more,  intellectual  light 
while  the  shades  of  the  last  darkness  are  drawing 
round,  still  we  must  not  allow  our  judgment  to  be 
warped  by  our  admiration.  We  do  not  say  — 

turpe  senex  miles,  turpe  senilis  amor  — 

but  we  must  see  that  the  grey-beard  is  battling  on 
the  right  side,  and  that  his  love  is  not  impure  or 
silly.  Few  minds  show  a  symmetrical  growth  ; 
advance  in  one  direction  is  often  purchased  at  great 
expense  in  another,  and  the  larger  the  growth  the 
greater  in  many  cases  the  deformity.  An  old  man 
who  keeps  abreast  of  his  age  in  one  respect  is 
almost  necessarily  behind  it  in  another;  and  Dr. 
Bigelow,  who  is  enamored  of  the  developments  of 
the  physical  science  of  the  present  day,  sees  little 
solid  worth  in  classical  studies,  as  they  were  pur 
sued  fifty  or  sixty  years  ago,  when  Ticknor  and  he 
'  lay  on  the  carpet  and  read  Homer  together  ',  when 
the  middle  voice  was  a  mystery  without  end,  and 
the  first  and  second  aorists  were  like  unto  the  great 
horn  and  the  little  horn  of  an  apocalyptic  beast. 


LIMITS   OF  CULTURE.  5 

When  Dr.  Bigelow  left  off  the  study  of  Latin  and 
Greek,  the  new  light  of  classical  philology  had  not 
begun  to  shine  on  this  country,  and  the  department 
had  not  been  lifted  from  its  former  low  level  and 
settled  firm  and  high  on  a  foundation  too  solid  to 
be  undermined,  too  lofty  to  be  battered  down.  The 
classical  philologian  of  the  present  day  is  not  a 
mere  grinder  of  vocables,  not  a  mere  monger  of 
paradigms.  Elegant  quotations  no  longer  make 
the  true  '  scholar ',  nor  is  a  man's  taste  measured  by 
ejaculatory  admiration,  by  his  euge  and  belle.  Dr. 
Bigelow  is  simply  fighting  the  shadows  of  the  past, 
and  shutting  his  eyes  to  the  advance  of  studies 
which  are  far  from  being  '  unprogressive '. 

The  text  from  which  Dr.  Bigelow  has  undertaken 
to  preach  against  his  own  conception  of  classical 
studies,  is  the  old  and  much  abused  aphorism,  '  art 
is  long  and  life  is  short',  which  Goethe  has  fitly  put 
into  the  mouth  of  the  'Philistine'  Wagner  in  his 
memorable  dialogue  with  Faust.  The  true  lesson 
which  it  ought  to  teach  in  these  times  is  the  import 
ance  of  making  the  art  more  effective.  When  it 
leads  to  despairing  acquiescence  in  ignorance,  or  to 
a  wilful  retrenchment  of  the  means  of  culture,  we 
heartily  wish  that  the  Greek  doctor  to  whom  the 
saying  is  attributed  had  spared  us  a  compound  pill 
of  such  unwholesome  operation.  Indeed  we  have 
very  little  patience  with  this  cry  about  the  limit  of 
life  and  the  limit  of  culture;  and  Stuart  Mill  may 
well  express  his  astonishment  at  the  narrow  views 
of  so  many  who  profess  to  furnish  theories  of  edu 
cation.  He  may  well  enlarge  on  '  this  strangely 
limited  estimate  of  what  it  is  possible  for  human 


6  LIMITS  OF  CULTURE. 

beings  to  learn,  resting  on  a  tacit  assumption  that 
they  are  already  as  efficiently  taught  as  they  ever 
can  be.  So  narrow  a  conception  not  only  vitiates 
our  idea  of  education,  but  actually,  if  we  receive  it, 
darkens  our  anticipations  as  to  the  future  progress 
of  mankind.'  What  we  want  is  not  less  Latin  and 
Greek,  but  less  waste  of  time  in  learning,  or  pre 
tending  to  learn,  Latin  and  Greek.  We  want 
improved  methods  of  teaching — and  in  order  to  get 
better  methods  we  want  better  teachers.  We  want 
teachers  who  have  a  living  and  breathing  knowl 
edge  of  the  language  which  they  profess  to  teach ; 
a  knowledge  which  the  learner  can  bathe  in  as  well 
as  drink.  What  constitutes  the  difficulty  of  acquir 
ing  Latin  as  compared  with  French,  Greek  as 
compared  with  German  ?  Not  merely  the  differ 
ence  of  antique  conception  and  modern,  not  merely 
the  difference  between  the  order  of  the  words,  not 
merely  the  more  subtle  modulation  of  the  inflec 
tions, — it  is  the  lack  of  teachers  thoroughly  pos 
sessed  of  their  subject,  fervid  in  their  love  of  the 
vocation,  affluent  in  illustration,  watchful,  inventive, 
— teachers  that  will  force  the  scholar  out  of  the 
apathetic  humdrum  of  exercise-book  and  grammar, 
now  exacting  a  microscopic  examination  of  the 
picture  of  antique  life,  now  passing  in  rapid  review 
the  great  characteristic  outlines,  But  such  teachers 
would  be  geniuses.  Yes,  and  we  need  geniuses  to 
divine  the  way  to  better  methods  and  save  the 
department  from  the  opprobrium  of  dispropor- 
tioned  toil,  so  that  it  shall  no  longer  be  said  with 
any  semblance  of  truth  that  'for  a  period  varying 
from  seven  to  ten  years  (four  years  in  college  and 


LIMITS   OF  CULTURE.  7 

from  three  to  six  in  preparation)  we  keep  young 
men  under  a  course  of  instruction  in  Latin  and 
Greek,  and  at  the  end  of  that  time  they  are  unable 
in  any  proper  sense  to  read  either  the  one  or  the 
other.'1 

But  while  we  admit  that  the  chief  defect  is  in  the 
manner  rather  than  the  matter  of  instruction,  we  are 
far  from  asserting  that  the  only  fault  lies  there.  We 
frankly  acknowledge  that  much  is  included  in  the 
scheme  of  classical  education  that  might  be  better 
omitted.  This  acknowledgment  is  not  so  easy  for 
a  professional  man  to  make,  because  it  is  not  so 
easy  for  a  professional  man  to  look  at  his  especial 
department  simply  as  a  branch  of  general  culture, 
which  must  not  be  suffered  to  grow  to  a  dispropor- 
tioned  height  or  breadth.  Instead  of  being  one  of 
a  hundred,  windows,  his  particular  casement  seems 
to  him  to  let  in  all  light  and  to  give  scope  to  all 
vision.  Seeing  as  he  does  how  the  vitality  of  his 
subject  exhibits  itself  in  the  remotest  and  most 
delicate  tissues  of  its  organism,  he  is  prone  to  dwell 
too  much  on  the  more  minute  and  subtle  ramifica 
tions,  because  to  his  mind  the  strength  of  the  prin 
ciple  is  made  perfect  in  weakness.  Hence  the 
charge  of  '  unpractical '  teaching,  of  hobby-horse 
specializing ;  hence  the  contempt  which  the  pop 
ular  mind  entertains  for  the  sense  of  professors 
generally.  Now  while  the  popular  mind  has  no 
right  to  dictate  to  the  higher  intellect  wherewith 
that  intellect  shall  occupy  its  own  powers,2  it  has  a 

1  Dr.  Barnard. 

2  In  der  Kunst, 

Wie  im  Leben,  kann  das  Volk 
Todten  uns  doch  niemals  richten. — Heine. 


8  LIMITS   OF  CULTURE. 

right  to  Yeject  claims  of  like  devotion  to  the  special 
ties  of  science  or  literature.  For  instance,  a  man 
can  be  a  classical  scholar  in  a  very  good  and  high 
sense  without  possessing  any  facility  in  scribbling 
elegiacs  or  alcaics,  and  without  even  a  hearing 
acquaintance  with  Serenus  Sammonicus  or  Didy- 
mus  Chalcenterus.  We  cannot  approve  of  spend 
ing  any  time  whatever,  except  for  some  specific, 
professional  purpose,  in  reading  authors  that  would 
not  be  worth  reading  unless  they  were  written  in 
Latin  or  Greek.  Away  with  Marcus  Manilius, 
Valerius  Flaccus,  Silius  Italicus  and  tous  cesgar$ons- 
ld,  as  Scaliger  called  them  with  deserved  contempt ; 
and  we  earnestly  hope  that  professors  of  Latin  do 
not  generally  deem  themselves  bound  to  read,  as 
poor  Addison  considered  himself  bound  to  quote, 
these  vapid  productions,  any  more  than  a  pro 
fessor  of  English  would  esteem  it  his  duty  to  go 
through,  say,  Glover's  Leonidas.  Nay,  if  we  might 
whisper  it,  there  are  not  a  few  pages  in  the  opera 
omnia  of  that  Turveydrop  of  Latin  style,  Marcus 
Tullius  Chickpea,  which  a  man  might  be  forgiven 
for  skipping ;  how  much  more  such  literature  as 
that  we  have  just  mentioned,  for  which  the  longest 
life  would  be  too  short.  Nor  can  we  feel  astonish 
ment  or  resentment  when  reformers  declaim  against 
the  fearful  waste  of  time  in  the  classical  schools  of 
England,  in  which  the  prime  of  boyhood  is  spent 
over  the  composition  of  execrable  Greek  and  Latin 
verses,  to  the  exclusion  of  other  valuable  matter 
even  in  the  domain  of  the  classics  themselves.  In 
order  that  one  boy  may  improve  a  knack  at  versifi 
cation,  five  hundred  are  sent  out  without  a  decent 


LIMITS   OF  CULTURE.  9 

knowledge  of  Latin  prose  composition,  so  that  the 
foreign  sneer  *  utAnglus ' — that  is  to  say, '  you  cannot 
expect  better  Latin  from  an  Englishman ' — is,  at 
least,  comprehensible.  And  what  is  the  residuum 
for  the  five  hundred  ?  A  knowledge  of  quantity  ? 
Why,  the  quantity  may  be  learned  by  the  ear  with 
out  any  trouble,  if  the  teacher  be  competent;  and 
at  any  rate,  so  long  as  the  absurd  English  pronun 
ciation  is  in  vogue,  the  quantity  tells  practically  on 
the  penult  only.  An  appreciation  of  poetical 
beauty?  Why,  any  boy  that  has  an  ear  for  the 
rhythm  of  language  can  readily  catch  the  music  of 
the  most  varied  metrical  structures,  under  the  guid 
ance  of  a  duly  qualified  preceptor.  If  the  ear  be 
denied  by  nature,  then  the  enjoyment  is  denied  and 
'there  an  end'. 

But  while  we  concede  the  necessity  of  reasonable 
limitations,  such  reformers  as  Dr.  Bigelow  have 
inscribed  '  Thorough  '  on  their  standards.  Dr.  Big 
elow  is  for  eliminating  the  classical  element  from 
popular  education,  and  for  reducing  it  to  a  mini 
mum  in  the  higher  institutions  of  learning.  To 
ward  Latin  he  seerns  a  little  more  tolerant,  and  he  has 
actually  condescended  himself  to  ventilate  sundry 
battle-flag  Latin  quotations;  but  Greek  is  the 
Carthage  of  this  Cape  Cod  Cato,1  and  he  boldly 
announces  his  belief  that  '  if  the  study  of  Greek 
should  be  abandoned  as  a  requisite  in  our  Univer 
sities — although  it  would  still  be  cultivated  like 

1 1  am  reminded  that  I  should  have  written  '  Back  Bay  '  for 
'  Cape  Cod  ',  but  in  1867  the  finer  differences  of  locality  were 
not  present  to  the  mind  of  one  who  was  passing  through  the 
rolling  mill  of  the  period. — B.  L.  G. 


IO  LIMITS   OF  CULTURE. 

other  exceptional  studies  with  success  and  delight 
by  many  devotees — yet  our  practical,  bustling  and 
over-crowded  generation  would  never  again  post 
pone  more  useful  occupations  to  adopt  it  as  an 
indispensable  academical  study.'  True,  he  is  not  so 
far  a  stranger  to  the  literary  culture  of  the  day  as 
not  to  notice  the  great  revival  of  the  study  of  Greek 
in  England,  that  study  which  reflects  itself  in  Ten 
nyson  and  Swinburne,  and  thrusts  itself  even  more 
distinctly  on  the  attention  of  the  most  casual 
observer  in  the  numerous  translations  of  Homer 
and  in  the  vigorous  investigations  of  Grote.  But 
this  rise  of  Hellenism  in  England,  one  of  the  most 
noteworthy  signs  of  these  years  as  betokening  an 
increase  in  the  liberal  element  of  English  culture, 
has  no  friend  in  Bigelow;  and  Gladstone's  whim 
sical  book  on  Homer,  which  has  no  scientific  value 
whatever,  is  put  into  the  foreground  as  a  fair  speci 
men  of  the  'impending  deluge'  of  Greek.  But  the 
'  impending  deluge  '  of  Greek  will  come  in  spite  of 
Dr.  Bigelow ;  and  his  hope  that  '  our  hemisphere  at 
least  will  be  relatively  spared  ',  is  sure  to  come  to 
nought.  However,  it  will  not  be  the  fault  of  Dr. 
Bigelow  and  abler  minds  than  his,  if  that  hope  is 
not  an  assured  one.  Sydney  Smith's  complaint  of 
'  Too  much  Latin  and  Greek '  has  become  the  war- 
cry,  '  Little  Latin  and  no  Greek  at  all '.  Year  by 
year  the  classics  have  been  pushed  back  in  the 
regular  curriculum  of  Northern  Colleges.  In  many 
of  them,  we  believe,  Latin  and  Greek  are  elective 
studies  during  the  last  two  years  of  the  course  ;  and 
fierce  champions  of '  scientific  '  pursuits  are  hedg 
ing  in  the  poor  Greeks  and  Romans  until  they  will 


LIMITS   OF   CULTURE.  II 

be  forced  into  quiet  niches  from  which  they  can  do 
no  harm.  Meanwhile  the  character  of  the  contro 
versy  is  degrading.  The  delicate  thing  to  be 
educated,  the  wonderful  human  mind,  is  pulled 
about  and  snarled  over  by  these  '  educationists  '  as 
if  they  were  dogs  and  that  a  bone.  Instead  of  join 
ing  in  a  common  inaugural  ceremony  over  the 
erection  of  a  new  temple  of  education,  each  dis 
putant  is  mouthing  out  an  Oratio  de  domo  sua ; 
each  advocate  is  eagerly  gathering  ex  parte  state 
ments  in  order  to  make  out  a  strong  case  ;  and  men 
like  Professor  Youmans  do  not  hesitate  to  divorce 
the  members  of  a  plan  of  education  in  order  to 
carry  out  their  own  theories.  How  unfair,  for 
instance,  to  quote  at  considerable  length  Mr.  Mill's 
plea  for  scientific  studies,  and  to  dismiss  as  curtly 
as  Youmans  does  the  same  author's  unanswerable 
argument  for  the  classics,  as  if  that  were  not  an 
integral  part  of  his  scheme  of  education.  As  for^ 
Professor  Youmans'  book  itself,  we  do  not  deny 
that  he  has  done  well  in  bringing  together  within 
a  brief  and  convenient  compass  these  scattered 
essays,  many  of  which  commend  themselves  to  our 
earnest  attention  by  their  depth  of  thought,  as  they 
address  themselves  to  our  aesthetic  sense  by  their 
beauty  of  illustration  ;  but  he  has  done  exceedingly 
ill  in  tying  these  gems  in  his  own  coarse  cotton 
handkerchief  to  maul  the  visages  of  the  Muses 
withal.  We  are  very  sure  that  he  would  have  met 
with  little  sympathy  in  this  attempt  from  Faraday* 
who  says  with  an  accent  of  perfect  honesty  that  '  he 
has  no  feeling  of  opposition  to  the  classics  ',  or  from 
Tyndall,  who  cries  out  with  an  earnest  longing  for 


12  LIMITS   OF  CULTURE. 

mutual  understanding—'  Is  there  no  mind  in  Eng 
land  large  enough  to  see  the  value  of  both  [science 
and  philology]  and  to  secure  for  each  of  them  fair 
play?  Let  us  not  make  this  a  fight  of  partisans; 
let  the  gleaned  wealth  of  antiquity  be  showered  into 
the  open  breast ;  but  while  we  "  unsphere  the  spirit 
of  Plato "  and  listen  with  delight  to  the  lordly 
music  of  the  past,  let  us  honor  by  adequate  recog 
nition  the  genius  of  our  own  time.'  And  who  shall 
say  him  nay  ?  At  the  risk  of  being  charged  with 
making  feeble  fight  we  shall  not  imitate  the  bigotry 
of  those  who  cry  down  the  study  of  the  classics,  and 
we  shall  admit  as  freely  as  any  one  the  claims  of 
the  sciences  which  are  called  by  eminence  the 
inductive.  But  we  shall  attempt  to  show  that  an 
education  cannot  be  full-orbed  and  rounded  off 
without  the  classics ;  or,  if  that  statement  of  our 
theme  be  too  ambitious,  we  shall  try,  with  more  or 
less  direct  reference  to  the  works  cited  at  the  head 
of  this  article,  to  make  a  partial  exhibition  of  the 
reasons  why  higher  culture  must  embrace  within 
its  limits  the  study  which  the  Germans  call  the 
'  science  of  antiquity '. 

What  is  education  ?  Training  of  the  mind  ? 
Like  Faraday,  '  we  should  like  a  profound  scholar 
to  indicate  to  us  what  he  means  by  training  of  the 
mind.'  But  the  profound  scholar  with  whose  dic 
tum  everybody  will  be  satisfied  has  not  yet  arisen, 
and  practically  almost  everybody  seems  dissatisfied 
with  the  training  he  has  received.  How  comes  it, 
Maecenas  ?  The  graduate  of  a  polytechnic  school 
laments  that  the  avenues  to  the  great  ranges  of 
antique  thought  were  not  thrown  open  to  him  in 


LIMITS   OF   CULTURE.  13 

early  youth  ;  the  Oxford  Master  of  Arts  regrets 
that  '  for  the  first  twenty  years  of  his  life  he  had 
been  taught  nothing  regarding  light,  heat,  mag 
netism  or  electricity.'  The  one  yearns  for  the 
companionship  of  the  great  spirits  of  the  past ;  the 
other  finds  himself  perplexed  by  the  insoluble 
problems  of  the  present.  But  your  successful  man 
seldom  complains  in  this  way.  The  complaint  is 
so  common  because  the  self-imputation  of  misdi 
rected  genius  is  so  common.  '  There  is  an  educa 
tion  for  the  ordinary  man ',  says  a  certain  writer ; 
*  for  the  man  of  genius  there  is  no  education  but 
what  he  gives  himself;  the  second  generally  con 
sists  in  destroying  the  first,'  and  but  too  many  seem 
to  think  that  every  assault  made  upon  their  early 
training  is  a  vindication  of  their  claims  to  the 
heavenly  gift  and  a  justification  of  failure  which 
some  people  would  deem  deserved.  When  a  young 
man  complains  that  his  '  college  lumber  '  stands  in 
the  way  of  useful  acquisition  and  application,  we 
shall  find  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten  either  that  the 
road  must  be  small  which  such  '  lumber '  would 
block,  or  that  the  fault  lies  in  a  want  of  vitalizing 
energy,  which  should  have  erected  the  'lumber' 
into  a  temple  or  a  fortress ;  which  should  have 
turned  the  stores  of  learning  into  bone  and  muscle 
instead  of  dragging  them  about  in  a  guarded  com 
missary-train.  May  we  not  simplify  this  matter  by 
distinguishing  sharply  between  '  education '  and 
'  instruction  '  ?  Education  is  the  normal  develop 
ment  of  the  powers  that  lie  in  man's  nature,  and  is 
not  to  be  confounded  with  instruction,  which  merely 
furnishes  the  means  and  appliances  of  education. 


14  LIMITS   OF  CULTURE. 

It  is  your  merely  '  instructed '  man  that  often  amazes 
you  by  a  want  of  comprehensive  power,  not  your 
really  '  educated '  man  ;  and  when  teachers  of  phy 
sical  science  complain  that  untaught  minds  grasp 
the  propositions  and  sequences  of  inductive  reason 
ing  more  readily  and  firmly  than  those  which  have 
been  '  educated '  in  all  classical  learning,  they  con 
found  accumulation  with  appropriation.  Of  such 
'  instructed '  men  Salmasius  is  the  eternal  type. 
Salmasius  on  whom  was  written  the  famous  epitaph, 
Hie  iacet  Salmasius,  vir  immortalis  memoriae,  exspe- 
ctans  indicium  ;^  he  of  whom  Christina  of  Sweden  said 
that  he  knew  the  word  for  chair  in  many  languages 
but  did  not  know  how  to  sit  on  it  in  one.  It  is  of 
the  modern  representative  of  this  class  that  the  Times 
says,  with  more  force  than  elegance,  '  at  sea  he 
is  a  landlubber,  in  the  country  a  cockney,  in  town 
a  greenhorn,  in  science  an  ignoramus,  in  business  a 
simpleton,  in  pleasure  a  milksop';  but  it  is  unfair  to 
regard  this  as  the  legitimate  result  of  the  study  of 
the  classics  properly  directed,  of '  instruction  '  con 
veyed  with  a  view  to '  education'.  And  here  we  must 
notice  the  influence  which  the  popular  nomencla 
ture  has  had  on  the  conception  of  the  nature  and 
objects  of  education.  The  terms  '  scholar '  and 
'scholarly',  which  in  other  languages  are  used  dis 
paragingly,  are  in  ours  at  once  narrowed  and 
elevated,  so  that  such  a  man  as  Faraday  is  forced  to 
say,  '  I  am  not  an  educated  man  according  to  the 
usual  phraseology',  because  the  usual  phraseology 
reflects  the  opinion  that  *  scholarship '  is  necessary 
to  education.  But  the  same  language  that  con- 

1  Cited  from  memory. — B.  L.  G. 


LIMITS   OF  CULTURE.  1 5 

serves  the  old  view  of  the  necessity  of  the  classics, 
shows  a  remarkable  shallowing  off  in  other  words. 
For  instance, '  inform  '  and  '  information  '  have  been 
reduced  in  modern  times  to  the  mere  acquisition  of 
facts,  instead  of  a  plastic  process  of  assimilation  ;x 
and  of  a  piece  with  this  is  the  phenomenon  that  in 
classic  French  there  is  no  homme  £duqu£y  only  an 
homme  instruit.  Mortifying  as  the  confession  may 
be  to  the  vanity  of  these  times,  it  is  by  no  means 
certain  that  our  ideal  of  education  is  as  high  as  it 
was,  and  such  renunciation  as  Dr.  Bigelow  preaches 
is  a  signal  indication  of  the  decline. 

Let  us  meet  the  question  fairly.  The  advocates 
of  the  subordination,  nay,  exclusion  of  classical 
studies  in  favor  of  the  scientific,  maintain  that  scien 
tific  studies  give  all  the  mental  training  that  is 
claimed  for  the  classics,  and  a  surplus  of  useful 
knowledge  as  an  offset  against  the  idle  elegances  of 
antique  culture;  and  that  on  the  other  hand  a 
classical  education  positively  unfits  the  mind  for  the 
study  of  physical  science — a  statement  which  rests 
on  too  slender  proof  to  need  a  detailed  refutation. 
Now  many  who  uphold  in  the  main  the  existing 
scheme  of  education,  have  tacitly  acknowledged 
themselves  beaten  on  the  point  of  the  intrinsic 
value  of  the  classics  and  make  their  fight  on  the 
line  of  their  disciplinary  usefulness.  We  are  not  dis 
posed  to  make  any  such  cowardly  surrender.  We 
are  not  content  to  consider  the  sacred  tripods  as 
dumb-bells  to  develop  the  mental  biceps  and  triceps, 
or  the  branches  of  the  Delphic  bay  as  an  apparatus 

1  So  that  Dr.  Barnard  can  say,  '  The  object  of  education  is  to 
form  and  not  to  inform  the  mind.' 


16  LIMITS   OF   CULTURE. 

for  turning  intellectual  somersaults  or  '  skinning ' 
intellectual  '  cats  '.  We  are  not  satisfied  with  point 
ing  to  the  brawny  arm  of  this  or  that '  bony  prizer', 
and  with  claiming  that  classic  culture  has  done  so 
much  for  this  or  that  successful  champion  of  the 
arena.  The  reply  is  too  obvious,  that  the  success 
was  attained  in  spite  of  time  and  force  spent  on 
'  unprogressive  studies  ',  and  we  open  the  way  to  an 
assault  on  what  Youmans  calls  '  the  wasteful  policy 
of  a  vicarious  discipline'.  As  the  Spartans  discour 
aged  those  gymnastic  exercises  which  did  not  bear 
directly  on  the  efficiency  of  the  soldier,  so  our  mod 
ern  reformers  try  to  frown  down  all  studies  which 
do  not  prepare  for  '  the  work  of  life '.  But  what  is 
'  the  work  of  life  '  ?  Is  it  not  just  here  that  we  need 
the  high  ideal  of  antiquity  in  order  to  counteract 
the  depressing  tendencies  of  modern  civilization, 
and  especially  those  of  American  civilization  ? 
The  aims  of  most  cultivated  people  are,  when 
examined,  no  more  exalted  than  those  of  their 
uneducated  neighbors.  How  few  feel  'the  poor 
ness  and  insignificance  of  human  life,  if  it  is  to  be 
all  spent  in  making  things  comfortable  for  ourselves 
and  our  kin,  and  raising  ourselves  and  them  a  step 
or  two  on  the  social  ladder.'1  Material  well-being 
in  more  or  less  refined  forms,  is  more  or  less  con 
sciously  the  main  object.  But  the  ideal  life  of 
antiquity  is  constructed  after  a  different  pattern  ;  and 
though  it  is  as  unattainable  by  the  means  of  mere 
humanity  as  the  antique  ideal  of  the  state,  we  must 
confess  the  superiority  of  the  one  as  of  the  other  to 
the  negative  virtues  and  positive  selfishness  of  our 

1  Stuart  Mill. 


LIMITS   OF  CULTURE.  IJ 

modern  standards.  '  Life  is  short  ',  says  the  mod 
ern.  'Acquire  by  the  shortest  way  the  most  efficient 
appliances  for  self-advancement.'  '  Life  is  short  ', 
says  an  ancient.  '  The  one,  true  fruit  of  life  on 
earth  is  purity  of  heart  and  work  for  the  good  of 
society.'  1  Which  is  nearer  to  the  Christian  model  ? 
The  one  is  a  machine,  the  other  a  corpse  ;  but  into 
this  you  may  breathe  the  soul  of  love,  into  that  you 
can  only  introduce  horse-power  or  donkey-power, 
as  the  case  may  be.  Antiquity  was  not  so  far 
wrong  in  what  it  wanted,  however  mistaken  in  the 
modes  of  attainment  ;  and  we  do  well  to  catch  the 
noble  aspiration  of  the  elect  few,  our  '  loftier  brothers 
of  antiquity  ',  as  Tyndall  calls  them;  those  'larger 
faculties  ',  as  they  are  reverentially  recognized  by 
Liebig.  But  our  reverence  is  paid  not  only  to  the 
stature,  but  also  to  the  type  —  a  type  which  it  is  our 
imperative  duty  to  study.  Yet  Dr.  Bigelow  says 
(and  is  he  not  'late  President  of  the  American 
Academy  of  Arts  and  Sciences  '  ?),  'Antiquity  has 
produced  many  great  men.  Modern  times  have 
produced  equally  great  men  and  more  of  them.' 
Argal,  let  the  ancients  go.  But  will  they  let  us  go  ? 
And  this  brings  us  to  our  first  and  great  proposi 
tion.  The  classics  are  not  superfluous  elegances, 
they  are  inevitable  necessities. 

The  history  of  the  world  is  one.  'We  cannot', 
says  Professor  Tyndall,  '  without  prejudice  to  hu 
manity,  separate  the  present  from  the  past.  The 
nineteenth  century  strikes  its  roots  into  the  centu 
ries  gone  by  and  draws  nutriment  from  them.  The 


6  ftlos  '  els  KapTrbs  TTJS  firiyc  tov  fays  diadems  oa-La  /cat 
npdgeis  Koiv&viKai.  —  Marc.  Ant.  vi.  30. 


1 8  LIMITS   OF  CULTURE. 

world  cannot  afford  to  lose  the  record  of  any  great 
deed  or  utterance ;  for  such  deeds  and  such  utter 
ances  are  prolific  throughout  all  times.  We  cannot 
yield  the  companionship  of  our  loftier  brothers  of 
antiquity — of  our  Socrates  and  Cato — whose  lives 
provoke  us  to  sympathetic  greatness  across  the 
interval  of  two  thousand  years.  So  long  as  the 
ancient  languages  are  the  means  of  access  to  the 
ancient  mind,  they  must  ever  be  of  priceless  value 
to  humanity ' ;  and  we  would  add,  of  prime  neces 
sity  to  all  who  wish  to  rise  above  the  lower  flats  of 
life.  For  until  we  can  eradicate  the  present  from 
the  past,  until  we  can  disentangle  from  the  growing 
structure  of  to-day  the  fibres  of  the  far-off  centuries, 
until  we  draw  out  from  our  own  lives  the  warp  of 
the  '  loom  of  Time ',  we  cannot  attain  to  any  high 
culture  without  an  adequate  knowledge  of  that 
world  of  the  ancients  to  which  we  owe  so  much. 
Verily  the  old  Greeks  themselves  were  far  more 
philosophical  than  those  recent  reformers,  who  wish 
to  banish  the  study  of  antiquity  as  an  old  wives' 
fable ;  for  they  would  not  give  up  their  mythical 
age,  not  because  they  were  credulous,  as  moderns 
may  think,  not  because  they  were  liars,  as  the 
Romans  charged,  but  because  they  would  not 
break  up  the  unity  of  their  national  life.  And  in  a 
much  stronger  sense  is  the  ancient  life  a  part  of  our 
own.  Athens  and  Sparta  are  more  to  us  than 
Theseus  to  the  one  or  Menelaus  to  the  other ; 
Rome  is  more  to  us  than  Romulus  to  her.  Now  it 
is  on  this  inseparable  union  of  antiquity  with  mod 
ern  life  that  classical  philology  bases  its  claims  as 
a  study  of  indispensable  importance.  For  if  we 


LIMITS   OF  CULTURE.  19 

accept  the  necessity  of  studying  ancient  history, 
we  must  accept  the  necessity  of  studying  that  his 
tory  largely  in  the  original,  and  we  must  still 
further  include,  besides  the  historians  proper,  the 
great  mass  of  illustrative  literature.  The  Persian 
war  must  be  studied  in  ^Eschylus  as  well  as  in 
Herodotus,  the  Peloponnesian  in  Euripides  and 
Aristophanes  as  well  as  in  Thucydides  and  Xeno- 
phon.  For  all  this  the  originals  are  needed.  '  There 
is  no  part  of  our  knowledge',  says  Mill  justly, 
— '  There  is  no  part  of  our  knowledge  which  it  is 
more  useful  to  obtain  at  first  hand — to  go  to  the 
fountain-head  for — than  our  knowledge  of  history. 
Yet  this,  in  most  cases,  we  hardly  ever  do.  Our 
conception  of  the  past  is  not  drawn  from  its  own 
records,  but  from  books  written  about  it,  containing 
not  the  facts,  but  a  view  of  the  facts  which  has 
shaped  itself  in  the  mind  of  somebody  of  our  own 
or  a  very  recent  time.  Such  books  are  very  instruc 
tive  and  valuable ;  they  help  us  to  understand  his 
tory,  to  interpret  history,  to  draw  just  conclusions 
from  it ;  at  the  worst,  they  set  us  the  example  of 
trying  to  do  all  this  ;  but  they  are  not  themselves 
history.  The  knowledge  they  give  is  upon  trust; 
and  even  when  they  have  done  their  best,  it  is  not 
only  incomplete  but  partial,  because  it  is  confined 
to  what  a  few  modern  writers  have  seen  in  the 
materials,  and  have  thought  worth  picking  out  from 
among  them.  How  little  we  learn  of  our  own 
ancestors  from  Hume,  or  Hallam,  or  Macaulay, 
compared  with  what  we  know  if  we  add  to  what 
these  tell  us  even  a  little  reading  of  contemporary 
authors  and  documents !  The  most  recent  his- 


2O  LIMITS   OF  CULTURE. 

torians  are  so  well  aware  of  this  that  they  fill  their 
pages  with  extracts  from  the  original  materials, 
feeling  that  these  extracts  are  the  real  history,  and 
their  comments  and  thread  of  narrative  are  only 
helps  towards  understanding  it.  Now  it  is  part  of 
the  great  worth  to  us  of  our  Greek  and  Latin 
studies  that  in  them  we  do  read  history  in  the 
original  sources.  We  are  in  actual  contact  with 
contemporary  minds ;  we  are  not  dependent  on 
hearsay;  we  have  something  by  which  we  can  test 
and  check  the  representations  and  theories  of  mod 
ern  historians.' 

And  for  all  this  translations  are  inadequate.  Not 
to  speak  of  differences  in  construction,  in  imagery, 
in  idiom,  even  words  in  different  languages  seldom 
cover  one  another ;  perfect  equivalents  are  rare,  and 
not  only  so,  but  every  classic  author  is  studded 
thick  with  technical  terms,  as  it  were,  which  must 
be  read  by  the  light  of  that  author's  peculiar  lan 
guage  and  which  defy  a  strict  transfer  to  another 
tongue.  Especially  is  this  the  case  with  the  an 
cients,  for  their  languages  fitted  tight  to  the  skin 
and  revealed  the  form  of  thought  much  more  accu 
rately  than  our  careless  garb  of  diction,  which  like 
our  modern  dress  is  pretty  much  the  same  for 
prince  and  for  peasant.  Translations  therefore  are 
almost  necessarily  inexact,  partial  or  unbearably 
diffuse,  very  certain  to  reflect  the  individual  views 
of  the  translator,  if  he  be  a  man  of  thought,  very 
certain  to  be  opaque,  if  he  be  a  mere  bookwright.  So 
we  conclude  that  a  knowledge  of  Latin  and  Greek 
is  necessary  to  that  other  necessity  of  high  culture 
— an  appreciation  of  antique  life ;  and  we  have  the 


LIMITS   OF   CULTURE.  21 

still  further  inducement,  that  while  we  are  thus  pen 
etrating  into  the  spirit  of  antiquity  we  are  not  only 
undergoing  the  silent  but  powerful  plastic  influence 
of '  perfect  and  finished  literary  compositions ',  but 
also  *  laying  in  a  stock  of  wise  thought  and  observ 
ation  still  valuable  to  ourselves '.  (Mill.)  For  it  is 
a  false  though  very  common  notion  that  the  mine 
of  ancient  ideas  has  been  exhausted,  that  all  that  is 
worth  anything  has  been  transfused  into  the  sub 
stance  of  modern  thought,  and  that  the  impalpable 
graces  of  artistic  composition  alone  remain,  a  poor 
reward  to  the  'earnest  thinker'  who  has  already 
digested  and  assimilated  or  else  rejected  the  solid 
contents  in  other  forms.  Now  to  the  man  to  whom 
impalpable  graces  '  prove  nothing '  we  must  of 
course  concede  the  inutility  of  classic  literature  on 
that  ground ;  but  we  doubt  very  much  whether 
'  the  Pythia  has  not  always  something  new  to  show 
those  who  revisit  her  shrine '. 

For  out  of  olde  feldes,  as  men  seith, 

Cometh  al  this  newe  corn  fro  yere  to  yere  ; 

And  out  of  olde  bokes,  in  good  feith, 

Cometh  al  this  newe  science  that  men  lere. — Chaucer. 

Indeed,  we  are  inclined  to  suspect  that  much  that 
is  supposed  to  be  the  last  result  of  modern  thought 
is  but  the  last  result  of  modern  plagiarism  ;  but  be 
that  as  it  may,  if  the  ancients  are  not  now  plagiar 
ized,  they  still  contain  much  that  deserves  to  be 
plagiarized ;  and  Mill  is  right  when  he  says  : 

4  The  discoveries  of  the  ancients  in  science  have 
been  greatly  surpassed,  and  as  much  of  them  as  is 
still  valuable  loses  nothing  by  being  incorporated 
in  modern  treatises  ;  but  what  does  not  so  well 


22  LIMITS   OF   CULTURE. 

admit  of  being  transferred  bodily  and  has  been  very 
imperfectly  carried  off  even  piecemeal,  is  the  treasure 
which  they  accumulated  of  what  may  be  called  the 
wisdom  of  life  ;  the  rich  store  of  experience  of 
.human  nature  and  conduct,  which  the  acute  and 
observing  minds  of  those  ages,  aided  in  their 
observations  by  the  greater  simplicity  of  manners 
and  life,  consigned  to  their  writings,  and  most  of 
which  retains  all  its  value.  The  speeches  in  Thucy- 
dides ;  the  Rhetoric,  Ethics  and  Politics  of  Aris 
totle  ;  the  Dialogues  of  Plato ;  the  Orations  of 
Demosthenes  ;  the  Satires  and  especially  the  Epis 
tles  of  Horace ;  all  the  writings  of  Tacitus  ;  the 
great  work  of  Quintilian,  a  repertory  of  the  best 
thoughts  of  the  ancient  world  on  all  subjects  con 
nected  with  education  ;  and  in  a  less  formal  man 
ner,  all  that  is  left  to  us  of  the  ancient  historians, 
orators,  philosophers,  and  even  dramatists,  are 
replete  with  remarks  and  maxims  of  singular  good 
sense  and  penetration,  applicable  both  to  political 
and  private  life.'  Applicable  both  to  political  and 
private!  We  should  think  so.  -Tacitus  writes  as 
if  his  cheek  were  burning  with  our  shame1 — and 
the  '  fast '  youths  of  our  country  might  take  many 
a  lesson  from  the  Nicomachean  Ethics  of  the  '  stout 
Stagirite '. 

Everybody  has  read  the  famous  dream  of  Jean 
Paul,  in  which  he  dreams  that  the  great  Architect 

1  Read  for  instance  the  third  book  of  the  Histories ;  how 
these  random  phrases  strike  in  :  culpae  vel  gloriae  socius(c.  3) — 
ignominiam  consumpsistis  (c.  z£)—factum  esse  scelus  loquuntur, 
faciuntque(c.  25) — extremum  malorum,  tot  fortissimi  viri prodi- 
toris  opem  invocantes  (c.  31).  (1867.)  The  quiver  of  the  period 
of  transition  is  here  also. — B.  L.  G. 


LIMITS   OF  CULTURE.  2$ 

and  Upholder  of  the  Universe  is  dead:  everybody 
remembers  how  the  ingenious  German  has  racked 
his  invention  to  depict  the  dreadful  *  unsouling '  of 
creation.  And  many  of  our  readers  in  like  manner 
may  have  indulged  their  imagination  in  conjuring 
up  the  consequences  which  would  ensue  from  the 
sudden  annihilation  of  some  important  agency  of 
modern  civilization.  Suppose  there  were  no  steam- 
engine.  Suppose  there  were  no  electric  telegraph. 
But  here  the  imagination  is  assisted  by  the  history 
of  the  past ;  and  that  a  past  within  the  memory  of 
men.  In  supposing  the  annihilation  of  antiquity, 
the  fancy  must  take  a  more  adventurous  flight,  a 
flight  more  like  that  of  the  dreaming  German. 
Were  we  to  wipe  out  all  the  records  of  classic 
antiquity,  what  a  series  of  inexplicable  riddles 
would  our  own  history  present !  Were  we  to  blot 
out  every  reference  to  the  ancient  writers  and  blow 
away  all  the  perfume  that  has  been  shaken  down 
from  their  vestments,  how  blurred  and  how  scent 
less  would  the  fairest  and  most  fragrant  pages  of 
our  own  poets  and  historians  appear !  Suppress  the 
matchless  masterpieces  of  classic  composition  and 
with  rigid  consistency  do  away  with  all  those  who 
in  modern  times  have  studied  and  imitated  them, 
and  what  a  chaos  of  style  we  should  have  in 
a  few  years  !  Bad  as  things  are  now,  they  would 
soon  become  infinitely  worse;  and  such 'messages  ' 
as  the  inspired  reformers  might  have  to  deliver, 
they  would  deliver  in  a  far  more  unintelligible 
gabble  than  they  do  now.  Even  the  poor  old  gods 
of  Greece  and  Rome  cannot  be  unniched  from  their 
Pantheon  without  leaving  an  unsightly  blank  ;  and 


24  LIMITS   OF   CULTURE. 

though  the  machinery  of  the  classic  mythology  be 
rusty  and  obsolete,  the  soul  which  animated  it  still 
animates  it.  As  conventional  deities,  the  gods  are 
dead ;  but  as  eternal  types  of  beauty,  they  need 
only  the  breath  of  genius  to  wake  them. 

But  all  argument  to  show  how  closely  the  classics 
of  antiquity  are  complicated  with  our  culture, 
becomes  amusingly  superfluous  in  view  of  the  con 
cessions  of  the  assailants  themselves.  In  attacking 
our  doomed  Thebes,  each  confident  Alexander 
wishes  the  house  of  his  pet  Pindar  spared  ;  and  so 
we  trust  that  not  a  building  will  be  demolished. 
'  Greek  art  is  unapproachable.  Do  not  touch  that.' 
'  Roman  jurisprudence  is  a  unique  possession  of 
the  ages.  Do  not  disturb  that.'  '  There  is  but  one 
Homer.  Let  him  alone.'  '  There  is  but  one  Aris 
totle.  The  "  master  of  those  who  know  "  is  still 
king.' l  And  so  we  might  go  on  and  cull  from  the 
writings  of  the  most  fervent  of  these  image-breakers, 
a  list  of  exceptions  which  would  embrace  the  whole 
sculpture-gallery.  Or,  if  we  have  no  other  defend 
ers,  the  very  words  of  our  language  would  rise  up 
to  maintain  the  necessity  of  preserving  the  old 
scheme  of  education. 

That  Latin  is  necessary  to  a  correct  and  idio 
matic  use  of  the  English  language  we  do  not  con 
tend  ;  but  why  is  it  not  necessary  ?  Simply  because 
the  pattern  of  our  phraseology  was  set  by  classical 
scholars,  and  the  combinations  have  become  fixed 

1  At  this  point  I  am  reminded  of  Tennyson's  quiet  protest 
against  Dante's  «  Maestro  di  color  che  sanno  ': 

'  Plato  the  wise  and  large-brow'd  Verulam, 

The  first  of  those  who  know.'  B.  L.  G. 


LIMITS   OF  CULTURE.  2$ 

by  usage.  It  will  astonish  any  one  who  has  not 
paid  attention  to  this  feature  of  our  language,  to 
see  with  what  minute  accuracy  the  Latin  diction  of 
English  is  constructed,  how  little  incongruity  there 
is  in  the  parts,  how  little  mixture  in  the  metaphor. 
If,  then,  a  man  attempts  to  enrich  the  phraseology  of 
the  English  language  by  new  combinations  with 
out  a  knowledge  of  its  constituent  parts,  he  is 
almost  certain  to  blunder  miserably  in  nine  cases 
out  of  ten ;  and  while  a  good  style  may  be  attain 
able  by  the  mere  imitation  of  earlier  authors,  the 
highest  excellence  in  English  is  not  to  be  reached 
without  Latin ;  and  that  Latin  is  necessary  to  an 
exact  appreciation  of  its  beauties  no  one  will  have 
the  hardihood  to  deny.  What  is  true  of  Latin  is 
true  in  a  less  degree  of  Greek,  and  indeed  the  prac 
tical  importance  of  a  knowledge  of  Greek  for  the 
mastery  of  the  technical  terms  of  every  art  and 
science  is  increasing  instead  of  diminishing  with 
the  expansion  of  physics.  The  nomenclature  of 
modern  sciences  is  not  like  the  nomenclature  of 
ancient  grammar.  The  meaning  of  genitive  and 
accusative,  article  and  subjunctive,  is  a  matter  of 
little  consequence ;  these  words  are  the  dtbris  of 
dead  systems,  which  it  is  interesting  but  not  neces 
sary  to  study ;  but  the  nomenclature  of  modern 
science  is  the  expression  of  its  life,  and  the  student, 
whether  he  will  or  no,  is  forced  to  learn  what  the 
parts  of  each  word  mean,  and  must  to  that  extent 
learn  Greek  and  Latin.  We  grant  freely  that  the 
Latin  and  Greek  words  which  are  used  simply  or 
combined  in  science  are  not  the  words  most  fre 
quently  to  be  met  with  in  the  classic  writers.  For 


26  LIMITS   OF   CULTURE. 

instance,  in  Botany  the  terms  monocotyledon, 
dicotyledon,  thallophyte  and  cormophyte  would 
not  inevitably  suggest  their  technical  signification 
to  the  classical  scholar;  but  when  he  has  once 
learned  them  he  retains  them  more  readily,  and 
there  is  in  them  for  him  a  vividness  of  meaning  and 
a  familiarity  of  sound  to  which  the  mere  English 
reader  must  be  a  stranger.  And  as  the  study  of 
both  classic  languages  facilitates  to  a  considerable 
extent  the  acquisition  and  application  of  a  scientific 
vocabulary,  so  Latin  especially,  as  the  key  to  so 
many  valuable  modern  languages  and  as  the 
medium  of  learned  communication  for  so  many 
generations,  is  absolutely  indispensable  to  any 
liberal  education. 

But  we  find  that  the  argument  has  almost  insen 
sibly  shifted  from  the  high  ground  of  the  necessity 
of  the  classics  to  their  utility  ;  and  even  this  lower 
level  gives  a  position  from  which  we  are  not  easily 
to  be  dislodged.  Let  us  develop  some  of  the  points 
without  pretending  to  embrace  all  or  to  exhaust  any 
one. 

It  has  long  been  recognized  that  the  study  of 
general  grammar  can  best  be  mastered  in  connection 
with  the  classic  languages  on  account  of  the  exact 
ness  as  well  as  variety  of  their  forms.  In  learning 
Latin  and  Greek  grammar  the  student  is  forced  to 
learn  the  grammar  of  his  own  tongue ;  the  best 
writers  of  English  have  never  studied  English 
grammar,  and  English  grammars  abound  most  in 
America.  But,  not  to  dwell  on  this  hackneyed  sub 
ject,  there  is  one  consequence  of  the  regular  and 
complicated  structure  of  the  classic  languages  the 


LIMITS   OF   CULTURE.  2*] 

full  disciplinary  value  of  which  is  not  generally 
appreciated  or  brought  out.  We  mean  the  freedom 
with  which  the  constituent  parts  of  the  sentence  can 
be  arranged.  This  freedom  is  a  peculiar  charm  of 
the  ripened  literature  of  Greece  and  Rome.  For  in 
the  earlier  Greek  and  Latin  authors,  although  the 
wealth  of  forms  was  greater,  the  mind  was  not  suffi 
ciently  practised  in  the  retention  and  application  of 
the  integral  parts  of  the  sentence,  to  permit  the  devel 
opment  of  those  complicated  structures  which  con 
fuse  the  novice  and  delight  the  adept  in  classic  liter 
ature.  The  sentence  in  Homer,  the  sentence  in  the 
early  Latin  comedy,  is  simple  ;  and  as  much  can  be 
said  in  favor  of  the  naturalness  of  the  order  of  the 
words  as  for  the  vaunted  logical  character  of  the 
French,  the  English,  or  any  other  modern  tongue. 
But  with  the  advance  of  the  reflective  powers  the 
sentence  expanded,  and  we  pass  from  the  balanced 
antitheses  of  Lysias  and  the  rolling  periods  of  Iso- 
crates  to  the  embattled  array  of  the  eloquence  of 
Demosthenes,  and  the  ample  sweep  of  Cicero's 
swelling  oratory.  So  characteristic  is  this  freedom, 
this  variety  of  arrangement,  that  the  classic  lan 
guages  have  been  called  '  the  transpositive '.  Now 
we  waive  altogether  the  question  of  rhetorical 
beauty,  of  logical  force,  of  artistic  rhythm :  we  do 
not  stop  to  show  that  our  language  has  lost  im 
mensely  by  shutting  itself  up  to  a  rigid  sequence  of 
subject,  predicate,  and  object;  we  confine  ourselves 
strictly  to  the  consideration  of  the  discipline  which 
this  felicitous  freedom  imposes.  The  student  is 
forced  '  to  trace  out  and  combine  remote  words  and 
members  of  a  sentence,  which,  though  disjoined  in 


28  LIMITS   OF  CULTURE. 

place,  are  still  held  in  their  true  relations  by  inflec 
tions  of  mode,  tense,  degree,  number,  case  and  gen 
der'.1  But  this  is  only  the  first  step.  If  he  be 
properly  taught,  the  student  is  forced  not  only  to 
trace  out  but  to  retain  in  his  memory  what  may 
seem  to  him  the  scattered  members  of  the  sentence, 
and  to  combine  those  parts — not  after  a  leisurely 
survey— but  as  they  come  forth  living  and  glowing, 
into  the  symmetry  of  a  united  whole,  a  breathing 
organism.  We  grant  that  it  is  far  too  common  to 
be  satisfied  with  an  analysis  of  Greek  and  Latin 
sentences  and  with  a  redistribution  of  the  words 
after  the  model  of  the  English  arrangement.  Boys 
are  taught  to  '  take  in '  the  parts  after  a  mechanical 
scheme;  and  there  are  not  many  teachers  who 
attempt  to  render  into  English  the  power  of  the 
varying  position.  But  every  one  who  knows  the 
classic  languages  knows  that  the  stage  of  study 
which  Dr.  Bigelow  describes  is  a  very  elementary 
one;  and  that  the  teacher  who  cannot  carry  boys 
rapidly  beyond  it  is  unworthy  of  the  name.  Greek 
and  Latin,  to  be  understood  properly,  must  be  read 
in  their  written  order.  It  is  not  enough  that  each 
word  should  convey  its  peculiar,  idiomatic  signifi 
cation  to  the  student;  it  must  strike  his  mind  at  the 
point  intended;  and  then  only  will  he  begin  to 
'  think  in  Latin  and  Greek ',  a  process  of  which  so 
much  is  said  in  jest  and  in  earnest,  and  so  little 
understood.  To  this  end  the  ear  must  be  practised 
as  well  as  the  eye,  which  is  so  apt  to  cheat  by  run 
ning  ahead  of  the  meaning.  If  boys  were  made  to 
translate  Greek  and  Latin  from  dictation  instead  of 

1  Dr.  Bigelow. 


LIMITS   OF  CULTURE.  2g 

from  the  book,  we  should  have  much  less  of  a 
childish  half-knowledge,  which  puts  the  elements 
more  or  less  slowly  together  like  the  pieces  of  a 
dissected  map  or  the  lozenges  and  squares  of  a  Chi 
nese  puzzle.1  But  considered  merely  as  a  discipli 
nary  exercise  of  the  intellect,  it  is  hard  to  conceive 
how  any  one  can  underrate  the  gymnastics  of  a 
practice  that  enables  the  mind  to  retain  with  ease 
and  combine  with  readiness  the  far-sundered  mem 
bers  of  a  Platonic  or  a  Ciceronian  sentence,  and  to 
regard  as  a  mere  juggling  dexterity  the  firmness  of 
memory  and  the  precision  of  judgment  which  such 
a  practice  tends  to  develop  and  maintain.  The 
student  who  can  catch  and  carry  away  a  clear  and 
exact  impression  of  a  long  and  complicated  period 
from  a  single  reading  has  attained  a  culture  of  the 
intellectual  faculties  which,  properly  employed,  can 
not  fail  to  secure  valuable  results  even  in  fields  of 
thought  and  action  far  remote  from  the  groves  of 
Academe. 

But  in  our  admiration  of  this  valuable  exercise  of, 
memory  and  judgment  we  must  not  forget  to  meet 
the  great  complaint  brought  against  the  study  of 
the  classic  languages.  The  study  of  Latin  and 
Greek  divides  itself,  as  is  charged,  into  a  sing-song 
memorizing  of  forms  and  vocables  and  the  mechan 
ical  application  of  hit-or-miss  rules  of  syntax ;  the 
grand  principles  of  inductive  reasoning  are  never 

1  This  passage,  written  in  1867,  is  still  timely.  J.  E.  B.  Mayor, 
in  his  Latin  Heptateuch  (1889) ,  speaks  (p.  Ixiv)  of '  the  blind  and 
cruel  folly  of  teaching  languages  through  the  critical  eye  alone, 
not  through  the  quickening  voice'.  See  also  a  very  effective 
presentation  of  similar  views  by  Professor  William  Gardner 
Hale  :  The  Art  of  Reading  Latin.  Boston  :  1887.— B.  L.  G. 


3O  LIMITS  OF  CULTURE. 

brought  into  play;  and  unless  the  goad  of  modern 
inquiry  stir  up  the  mind,  the  classic  scholar  is  apt 
to  turn  into  a  cross  between  a  parrot  and  a  donkey. 
Inductive  reasoning !  Who  does  not  become  a  little 
weary  of  this  cry  of  inductive  reasoning  ?  this  itque 
reditque  viam  of  so  many  philosophic  praters. 

But  is  there  no  scope  for  inductive  reasoning  in 
the  study  of  languages  ?  True,  old-fashioned  as  it 
may  seem,  we  believe  that  the  best  method  of 
acquiring  the  forms  of  a  language,  its  vocabulary, 
its  great  syntactic  phenomena,  is  by  a  direct  strain 
upon  the  memory.  In  vain  does  Professor  You- 
mans  warn  us  of  the  direful  consequences  of  this 
treatment  of  the  faculty;  in  vain  does  he  intimate 
that  it  is  a  sensitive  surface  which  must  not  be 
dulled  for  other  things  by  the  constant  application 
of  dead  vocables.  Dead  vocables  have  to  be  learned 
in  all  the  sciences ;  and  one  of  Professor  Youmans' 
ablest  witnesses,  Professor  Henfrey,  regards  it  as 
quite  a  prince's  feather1  in  the  cap  of  Botany  that 
she  practises  the  memory  by  her  extensive  and  com 
plicated  Graeco-Latin  glossary.  But  after  the  forms 
are  acquired — as  so  many  stiff  and  stark  facts — we 
do  not  see  any  objection  to  the  introduction  of  the 
inductive  process.  For  instance,  the  student  of 
Latin  learns  a  list  of  verbs  of  the  so-called  third 
conjugation  which  form  the  perfect  in  i.  Another 
set  form  the  perfect  in  si?  Those  are  facts  emi 
nently  necessary  to  be  learned,  always  provided 

'Amaranthus  hypochondriacus. 

2  This  illustration  was  taken  from  a  Latin  grammar  (Latt- 
mann  and  Muller's)  which  I  happened  to  be  translating  at  the 
time,  and  I  leave  it  as  matter  of  history. — B.  L.  G. 


LIMITS   OF   CULTURE.  31 

that  Latin  is  to  be  learned  for  its  own  sweet  sake. 
As  facts  they  are  parallel  with  hundreds  of  others 
in  the  external  world  which  he  learns  from  his 
book  and  which  he  cannot  always  verify  with  his 
eyes.  Now  that  these  important  facts  have  been 
learned,  let  him  observe  the  two  sets  of  verbs  and 
what  does  he  find  as  a  further  difference  between 
them  ?  The  verbs  which  form  the  perfect  in  i  have 
a  short  stem  syllable,  those  which  form  the  perfect 
in  si  have  a  long  stem  syllable.  He  is  about  to 
jump  to  a  rule — but  fair  and  softly — there  is  a  list 
of  verbs  that  go  counter  to  this  rule:  he  examines 
these  likewise  with  a  view  to  their  common  charac 
teristics  :  he  finds  that  many  of  them  are  redupli 
cated,  and  finally  that  in  those  which  are  not  redup 
licated,  reduplication  is  suppressed  or  impossible ; — 
and  so  he  pushes  his  search  to  the  confines  of  a 
double  element  in  the  perfect  formation,  each  char 
acteristically  different  throughout.  How  *  scientific ' 
we  should  be  if  the  province  of  work  were  physics  ! 
Again,  syntactical  '  rules ',  as  they  are  called,  are 
mere  groups  of  phenomena  which  we  can  use  in 
order  to  ascend  to  higher  generalizations ;  and  after 
the  student  has  learned  the  facts  he  should  be 
taught  to  analyse  and  combine  them.  To  draw  yet 
another  illustration  from  Latin  grammar.  'In 
names  of  cities  and  small  islands  the  place  where  is 
expressed  by  the  genitive;  except  in  the  third 
declension  or  plural  number,  when  the  ablative  is 
employed.'  At  first  it  is  not  necessary  to  tell  the 
boy  that  the  genitive  in  question  is  not  a  genitive, 
because  to  be  perfectly  correct  that  would  involve 
the  other  statement  that  the  ablative  is  not  really 


32  LIMITS   OF  CULTURE. 

an  ablative;  and  what  with  real  ablative  and 
pseudo-ablative,  real  genitive  and  pseudo-genitive, 
there  would  be  no  getting  forward.  But  the  teacher 
might  use  the  unreasonableness  of  the  exception  to 
make  the  boy  think  about  the  whole  class  of  phe 
nomena.  Why  should  the  third  declension,  why 
should  the  plural  number  make  the  difference  ?  He 
reads  further  and  finds  that  the  appositions  of  the 
apparent  genitive  are  not  in  the  genitive  but  in  the 
ablative.  He  finds  on  the  list  of  genitives  a  form 
domi,  which  looks  like  a  genitive  but  is  not,  and 
he  begins  to  suspect  that  the  genitives  are  after  all 
nothing  but  ablatives  in  disguise;  and  so  he  turns 
to  the  ablative  and  in  like  manner  finds  out  the 
different  elements  of  that  complex  case :  and  here 
too  he  has  before  him  a  problem  of  elimination, 
which  resembles  very  closely  the  conditions  of 
observation  in  physical  science,  and  which  brings 
into  active  exercise  those  intellectual  functions  which 
are  supposed  to  lie  dormant  under  the  spoon-feed 
ing  process  of  classical  cramming.  True,  our  gram 
mars,  when  they  put  these  things  at  all,  put  them 
first;  but  teachers  ought  to  put  them  last  and  guide 
their  pupils  through  the  course  of  reasoning  which 
led  to  the  result.  But  these  are  poor  exemplifica 
tions  of  the  range  of  philological  investigations.  If 
we  ascend  to  the  higher  walks  of  classical  study  and 
enter  upon  the  domain  of  textual  criticism,  we  shall 
find  abundant  exercise  for  every  intellectual  faculty. 
Out  of  the  confused  mass  of  manuscripts  the  lead 
ing  heads  of  families  are  to  be  selected,  their  rela 
tionships  determined,  the  derivations  explained,  the 
gaps  filled,  the  original  archetype  restored.  What 


LIMITS  OF  CULTURE.  33 

close  comparison  does  such  a  process  involve,  what 
careful  research,  what  piercing  acumen,  what  com 
prehensive  judgment, — nay  more,  what  quick  intui 
tion,  what  inventive  fancy !  A  great  critic  of  this 
kind  cannot  be  a  small  man.  And  if  on  the  other 
hand  the  student  turns  from  the  masterpieces  of 
ancient  literature  to  the  languages  themselves,  what 
a  field  of  observation  and  research  does  their  beau 
tiful  structure  present!  The  laws  which  regulate 
the  combinations  of  vowels  and  consonants,  the 
'chemical  affinities',  the  loves  and  hates  of  the 
elements,  the  subtle  shiftings  of  the  accent,  all  these 
things  were  not  found  out  in  dreams — they  were 
ascertained  by  rigid  inductive  processes ;  and  while 
the  general  student  cannot  be  expected  to  master 
all  the  details  of  the  department,  he  ought  to  be 
taught  enough  of  the  method  to  appreciate  the 
scientific  character  of  the  study. 

How  far  the  general  science  of  language  is  to  be 
taught  in  schools  is  a  much  debated  question — a 
question  which  is  to  our  mind  closely  complicated 
with  that  other  question  as  to  the  proper  age  for 
commencing  the  study  of  Latin  and  Greek.  But  if 
it  is  to  be  taught  at  all,  it  is  evident  that  it  is  best 
taught  in  connection  with  the  classic  languages.  In 
this  country  the  professorship  of  comparative  philo 
logy  is  often  coupled  with  that  of  modern  lan 
guages  ;  partly  as  a  sort  of  make-weight  for  the 
supposed  triviality  of  the  grammatical  studies  re 
quired  in  the  department ;  partly  because  the  study 
of  modern  languages  is  commonly  later,  and  Greek 
and  Latin  are  presupposed.  But  the  presupposition 
is  often  a  sad  mistake.  The  knowledge  of  teacher 


34  LIMITS  OF  CULTURE. 

and  scholar  is  frequently  at  fault ;  and  in  attempting 
to  enlarge  the  scope  of  comparison,  accuracy  of 
comparison  is  sacrificed.  Or  if  Greek  and  Latin  be 
set  aside  and  the  study  be  pursued  merely  by  the 
light  of  modern  languages,  it  requires  either  too 
little  to  be  worth  the  name,  or  too  much  in  propor 
tion  to  its  importance  in  any  general  scheme  of 
education.  English  and  French  etymologies  out  of 
their  organic  place  are  mere  curiosities.  The  stu 
dent  learns  with  a  half-incredulous  amusement  that 
wassail  means  a  health  to  you  /,  or  that  aujourd  'hui 
is  a  contraction  for  ad  ilium  diurnum  de  hoc  die,  or 
that  dortnavant  is  '  the  short '  for  de  hora  inde  ab 
ante.  He  learns  it  and  straightway  forgets  it ;  or  if 
he  remembers  it,  remembers  it  only  as  he  would  a 
droll  anecdote.  And  on  the  other  hand,  to  be 
strictly  scientific,  and  to  exact  Gothic  of  the  student 
of  German,  is  as  hard  measure  as  to  require  Sans 
krit  of  the  student  of  Greek.  Now  we  have  not  the 
least  doubt  that  the  gospels  have  a  new  charm  in 
the  version  of  Ulfilas,  and  that  the  Rig- Veda  Samhita 
unfolds  a  world  of  beauty  to  the  initiated ;  but  the 
majority  of  cultivated  people  will  be  satisfied  with 
King  James'  translation  of  the  one  and  Max  Miil- 
ler's  rendering  of  the  other,  and  will  naturally  prefer 
languages  which  contain  a  literature  of  greater 
wealth  or  more  sympathetic  character — such  as 
Greek  and  Latin,  which,  with  the  mother-tongue, 
are  sufficient  for  the  comprehension  of  the  general 
outline  of  the  study,  certainly  within  the  bounds  of 
the  Indo-Germanic  family.  And  here  it  is  worthy 
of  note  how  each  of  the  classic  languages  fits  into 
the  other ;  how  the  two  nationalities  preserve  their 


LIMITS  OF  CULTURE.  35 

independence  even  in  their  monuments;  so  that 
Latin  after  serving  as  the  guide  to  bring  modern 
times  to  a  knowledge  of  Greek  beauty,  attracts  us 
by  its  own  peculiar  worth.  For,  while  the  Greek 
possesses  a  greater  transparency  of  structure,  a 
greater  wealth  and  flexibility  of  form,  the  Latin  has 
often  remained  more  faithful  to  the  original  type ; 
and  though  it  has  sacrificed  the  delicate  shades  of 
vocalism  in  vowel  and  diphthong,  has  clung  with  a 
firmer  grasp  to  the  consonants  that  bear  the  sacred 
vessel  of  the  sense.  So  the  two  languages  serve 
each  to  supplement  the  other  and  to  present  together 
the  noblest  specimen  of  known  languages,  and  the 
best  subject  for  the  demonstration  of  the  principles 
of  the  new  science.  As  we  have  said,  it  does  not 
yet  appear  how  far  that  new  science  is  to  be  taught 
as  an  element  of  general  culture ;  but  judging  by  its 
rapid  expansion  and  increasing  popularity  it  will 
soon  claim  a  place  in  the  curriculum  as  loudly  as 
any  of  those  departments  of  human  research  that 
find  their  eloquent  advocates  in  Professor  You- 
mans'  volume.  For  though  no  one  now-a-days 
supposes  language  to  be  a  direct  inspiration  of  the 
Deity,  on  the  other  hand  no  one  supposes  that  it  is 
a  sheer  invention  of  man ;  and  as  on  any  theory  it 
is  in  Him  that  we  live  and  move  and  have  our  being, 
language  as  well  as  matter  may  be  regarded  as  a 
vestment  of  the  divine  idea. 

But  to  return  to  the  disciplinary  advantages  of 
the  study  of  the  classics,  we  would  emphasize  one 
which  most  people  are  apt  to  overlook,  and  that  is, 
the  uncertainty  of  the  results  obtained.  In  inter 
pretation,  in  criticism,  in  syntax,  in  etymology, 


36  LIMITS  OF  CULTURE. 

innumerable  problems  present  themselves  that  are 
capable  only  of  a  more  or  less  probable  solution ; 
just  as  in  real  life  we  are  often  forced  to  act  on 
partial  evidence  and  rudely  to  bridge  or  boldly  to 
leap  the  chasms  in  our  pathway.  Thus  the  mind  of 
the  student  is  educated .  to  balance  between  likeli 
hoods,  and,  what  is  still  more  important,  to  suspend 
judgment  and  confess  impossibilities.  Such  a  train 
ing  is  a  wholesome  corrective  to  the  natural  dog 
matism  of  youth  and  inexperience,  and  it  is  from 
this  point  of  view  that  Dr.  Paget  recommends  the 
study  of  physiology : 

1  It  is  a  great  hindrance  to  the  progress  of  truth 
that  some  men  will  hold  with  equal  tenacity,  things 
that  are  and  things  that  are  not  proved,  and  even 
things  that  from  their  very  nature  do  not  admit  of 
proof.  They  seem  to  think  (and  ordinary  educa 
tion  might  be  pleaded  as  justifying  the  thought) 
that  a  plain  "  yes  "  or  "  no  "  can  be  answered  to  every 
question  that  can  be  plainly  asked  ;  and  that  every 
thing  thus  answered  is  a  settled  thing  and  to  be 
maintained  as  a  point  of  conscience.  I  need  not 
adduce  instances  of  this  error  while  its  mischiefs  are 
manifest  everywhere  in  the  wrongs  done  by  prema 
ture  and  tenacious  judgments.  I  am  aware  that 
these  are  faults  of  the  temper,  not  less  than  of  the 
judgment;  but  we  know  how  much  the  temper  is 
influenced  by  the  character  of  our  studies ;  and  I 
think  if  any  one  were  to  be  free  from  this  over-zeal 
of  opinion,  it  should  be  one  who  is  early  instructed 
in  an  uncertain  science,  such  as  physiology/ 

So  Faraday  says  of  the  '  education  of  the  judg 
ment  ' : 


LIMITS  OF  CULTURE.  37 

*  The  mind  naturally  desires  to  settle  upon  one 
thing  or  another ;  to  rest  upon  an  affirmative  or  a 
negative;  and  that  with  a  degree  of  absolutism 
which  is  irrational  and  improper.  In  drawing  a 
conclusion,  it  is  very  difficult,  but  not  the  less 
necessary,  to  make  it  proportionate  to  the  evidence. 
Except  where  certainty  exists  (a  case  of  rare  occur 
rence),  we  should  consider  our  decisions  as  probable 
only.  The  probability  may  appear  very  great,  so 
that  in  affairs  of  the  world  we  often  accept  such  as 
certainty  and  trust  our  welfare  or  our  lives  upon  it. 
Still,  only  an  uneducated  mind  will  confound  prob 
ability  with  certainty,  especially  when  it  encounters 
a  contrary  conclusion  drawn  by  another  from  like 
data.  This  suspension  in  degree  of  judgment  will 
not  make  a  man  less  active  in  life,  or  his  conclusions 
less  certain  as  truths ;  on  the  contrary,  I  believe 
him  to  be  the  more  ready  for  the  right  amount  and 
direction  of  action  on  any  emergency ;  and  am  sure 
his  conclusions  and  statements  will  carry  more 
weight  in  the  world  than  those  of  the  incautious 
man.' 

But  it  may  be  objected  that  even  if  philology 
affords  the  appliances  for  such  training,  the  training 
itself  is  rare.  That  is  the  fault  of  the  method ;  and 
we  do  not  deny,  nay,  vehemently  urge,  that  the 
method  needs  radical  changes.  And  if  it  be  further 
objected  that  philologians  are  the  most  dogmatic 
of  men  in  their  writings,  it  is  not  because  they 
are  students  of  the  classics,  but  because  they  are 
teachers  of  the  classics ;  for  teaching  is  an  occupa 
tion  fraught  with  great  danger  to  that  humility  and 
that  self-distrust  which  are  necessary  to  the  highest 
intellectual  attainments. 


38  LIMITS  OF  CULTURE. 

We  have  barely  touched  on  the  aesthetic  and  the 
moral  advantages  of  the  study  of  the  classics,  and 
we  will  not  enter  upon  them  now.  With  such  argu 
ments  this  generation  has  little  sympathy,  and  most 
persons  must  have  their  sympathy  roused  in  order 
that  their  intellect  may  have  play.  For  the  general 
reader  the  theme  is  already  threadbare,  and  a  further 
strain  on  it  may  be  dangerous.  The  professional 
student  of  the  classics  needs  no  vindication  of  his 
devotion,  nor  need  he  reply  to  the  reproach  of 
grubbing  after  tasteless  or  bitter  Greek  roots  with 
a  philippic  against  the  minutiae  of  scientific  re 
search.  Agassiz  is  perfectly  welcome  to  discuss  the 
vertebral  structure  of  the  selachidae,  whatever  they 
may  be;  and  we  leave  it  to  minds  as  shallow  as 
Charles  Reade's  to  sneer  at  the  philosophers  who 
make  the  crustaceonidunculae  their  chief  study.  We 
concede  freely  to  all,  what  we  claim  for  ourselves, 
the  right  of  gaining  knowledge  for  the  sake  of 
knowledge.1  Even  in  maintaining  the  right  and  title 
of  the  classics  as  both  a  means  and  an  end  of 
education,  we  have  not  thought  it  necessary  to 
imitate  the  example  of  those  who  would  fain  break 
up  the  beautiful  statues  of  antiquity  to  feed  their 
lime-kilns,  to  build  their  walls.  We  do  not  say 
unreservedly '  the  old  is  better '.  We  have  no  feeling 

1 1  have  dwelt  upon  the  study  as  a  means  of  mental  discipline 
and  on  its  practical  application,  rather  than  as  a  branch  of 
science  pursuing  knowledge  for  its  own  sake.  Let  it  not  be 
supposed  that  I  do  not  prize  it  for  its  last  attribute,  for  indeed 
I  regard  this  as  the  highest  and  best,  and  I  might  express  my 
own  feelings  in  the  well-known  words  of  the  wise  king  :  «  It  is 
the  glory  of  God  to  conceal  a  thing,  but  the  glory  of  a  king  to 
search  it  out.' — Professor  Henfrey  on  the  Study  of  Botany. 


LIMITS   OF  CULTURE.  39 

against  the  physical  sciences,  and  if  necessary  we 
would  fain  make  room  for  them  by  better  methods 
of  instruction.  But  we  do  not  intend  to  give  up  the 
classics  or  resign  any  organic  portion  of  the  study 
for  anything  else.  They  constitute  not  only  a  part, 
but  a  member  of  all  higher  education — not  a  pe'pos 
merely,  but  a  pfros.1  Without  that  member  any 
scheme  is  imperfect,  any  outline  mutilated.  And  if 
our  readers  have  wearied  of  the  discussion,  we  beg 
them,  in  palliation  of  our  essay  on  a  question  that 
has  been  dragged  hither  and  thither  so  much,  to 
remember  that  such  reviews  become  necessary  from 
time  to  time,  and  that  at  the  present  juncture  a 
return  to  the  old  paths,  a  renewal  of  the  old  fortifi 
cations,  is  eminently  appropriate.  We  of  the  South 
have  little  left  except  our  system  of  higher  educa 
tion,  and  it  is  our  duty  to  meet  the  assault  that  is 
making  on  it — an  assault  which  is  a  part  of  the 
grand  attempt  to  crush  all  individuality  of  develop 
ment  into  a  homogeneous  centralization.  Already 
do  we  see  the  snares  spread  ;2  already  is  the  '  vast 
slave-net  of  mischief  preparing  to  draw  all  the 
educational  institutions  of  the  country  into  the 
meshes  of  a  West  Point  system.  In  a  few  years  the 
Minister  of  Public  Instruction  will  send  out  his 
sergeants  to  drill  the  free  citizens  of  this  republic 
into  passive  tools  of  a  great  central  power ;  and  we 
can  well  understand  why  studies  which  stir  so  many 
earnest  doubts  of  our  present  condition  should  be 
thrust  into  the  background,  so  that  none  but 
dreamers  may  think  of  the  wonders  which  Greek 

1  M.  Ant.  vii.  13. 
ydyyap.ov"ATT}s  TravaXwrov, — Aesch.  Ag.  361. 


4O  LIMITS  OF  CULTURE. 

autonomy  wrought,  or  of  the  immeasurable  woe 
which  was  the  price  of  Roman  unity  and  the  cause 
of  Roman  ruin.1 

1  This  gloomy  vaticination  was  written  in  1867  and  the  pro 
phecy  has  not  been  fulfilled  yet,  but  the  Blair  bill  is  still  an  issue ; 
and,  as  I  am  preparing  these  old  studies  for  a  brief  resurrection, 
the  Nation  of  January  16,  1890,  marshals  the  protests  of  Repub 
lican  Senators  against  «  a  bill  drawing  into  Federal  control  an 
interest  that  from  the  settlement  of  the  country  to  this  day 
has  been  under  local  control,  and  wisely  so.  It  would  be  the 
beginning  of  a  permanent  policy,  a  permanent  new  relation 
between  the  Federal  Government  and  the  States,  and  it  woul'd 
never  go  backward  ;  it  would  never  diminish  its  action.'  (Sen 
ator  Hawley.)— B.  L.  G. 


CLASSICS  AND  COLLEGES 


CLASSICS  AND  COLLEGES. 

It  is  not  the  immediate  object  of  this  study  to 
show  the  importance  of  the  classics  in  any  system 
of  education,  the  indispensable  necessity  of  them 
for  all  higher  training.  This  is  a  thesis  which  has 
not  lacked  champions,  and  such  is  its  nature  that  it 
is  as  inexhaustible  as  the  history  of  human  thought 
and  human  culture.  The  phases  of  the  subject 
must  be  familiar  to  all ;  and  it  might  be  as  well  to 
take  the  point  for  granted,  and  to  ask  at  once  what 
can  be  done  for  the  advanced  study  of  the  classics 
in  our  higher  institutions  of  learning,  and  not  pause 
to  strengthen  and  widen  the  old  lines  of  defence,  to 
magnify  the  importance  of  the  study  of  the  ancient 
languages  as  an  intellectual  discipline,  to  insist  on 
the  aesthetic  necessity  of  classical  study,  to  expand 
on  our  historical  relations  to  antique  life,  and 
to  extol  the  intrinsic  value  of  antique  literature. 
And  yet,  at  a  time  when  the  great  masters  of  the 
department  begin  to  show  despondency,  and  ask 
what  they  must  throw  overboard  in  order  to  save 
the  ship,  the  question  does  recur  whenever  any 
educational  theme  is  broached :  Is  the  ship  worth 
saving  ?  Is  this  plea  for  the  classics  anything  more 
than  an  oratio  de  domo  of  a  guild  of  needy  school 
masters,  who  would  be  utterly  bereft  of  resource  if 
their  occupation  should  be  taken  away,  and  who 


44  CLASSICS  AND    COLLEGES. 

pass  on  to  their  unfortunate  successors  the  dreary 
watchwords  of  a  hopeless  cause  ?  That  is  hardly 
the  case.  It  is  true  that  the  vested  interests  of 
classical  study  are,  even  from  a  mercantile  point  of 
view,  enormous.  Not  only  teachers  but  pub 
lishers  have  a  heavy  stake  in  the  fortunes  of  the 
classics,  and  the  capital  involved  in  them  reminds 
us  of  the  pecuniary  hold  of  Paganism  in  the  early 
Christian  centuries.  But  this  is  only  one  aspect, 
and  it  need  hardly  be  said  the  lowest  aspect,  of  the 
question.  The  ancient  classics  are  life  of  our  life, 
as  has  been  well  said,  not  merely  money  of  our 
purse.  A  part  of  our  heritage  from  the  ages,  they 
are  an  indefeasible  possession.  We  cannot  get  rid 
of  Greece  and  Rome  if  we  would.  The  phraseology 
of  Latin  is  wrought  into  our  mother-tongue.  The 
scientific  vocabulary  of  English  is  studded  with 
Greek  words.  The  whole  body  of  our  literature  is 
penetrated  with  classical  allusions.  In  the  Marchen 
of  Goethe  the  will-o'-wisps  'with  their  peaked 
tongues  dexterously  licked  out  the  gold  veins  of 
the  colossal  figure  of  the  composite  king  to  its  very 
heart,  and  when  at  last  the  very  tenderest  fila 
ments  were  eaten  out,  the  image  crashed  suddenly 
together.'  And  some  such  fate  would  overtake 
our  higher  culture  if  the  golden  threads  of  antique 
poetry  and  philosophy  were  withdrawn.  Not  only, 
then,  do  the  traditions  of  the  classic  nations  encoun 
ter  us  at  every  turn.  That  might  simply  be  an 
annoyance.  But  they  have  marked  out  our  course  ; 
they  have  dug  out  our  channels  of  thought  and 
action.  We  build  on  Greek  lines  of  architecture ; 
we  march  on  Roman  highways  of  law ;  we  follow 


CLASSICS  AND   COLLEGES.  45 

Greek  and  Roman  patterns  of  political  and  social 
life.  Not  to  understand  these  forces,  these  norms, 
is  not  to  understand  ourselves. 

Nor  can  we  get  rid  of  the  ancients  by  the  cheap 
assumption  that  we  have  nothing  to  learn  from 
them.  It  is  easy  enough  to  repeat  the  familiar 
aphorism  about  the  ancients,  to  say  that  we  are  the 
old  and  they  the  young,  that  we  are  richer  than 
they  by  the  accumulated  experience  of  millenniums. 
There  are  departments  of  thought  and  art  in  which 
the  problems  are  eternal,  the  results  abiding,  the 
achievements  final.  The  old  thinkers  have  asked 
questions,  the  old  moralists  have  laid  down  rules, 
the  old  artists  have  moulded  statues — questions 
which  we  repeat,  rules  which  we  must  accept, 
statues  which  we  can  only  admire,  which  we  can 
not  emulate.  Their  observation  of  external  phe 
nomena  may  have  been  defective.  Of  that  let 
professed  physicists  be  the  judges.  It  is  not  an 
unfamiliar  charge.  Admit,  then,  the  imperfect  char 
acter  of  their  observation,  not  only  in  physics  but 
in  language,  and  show  how  narrow  was  their  range, 
how  imperfect  their  induction.  And  yet  they  pro 
pounded  all  the  ultimate  questions  concerning  lan 
guage — questions  which  we  are  grappling  with  in 
vain  to-day ;  and  Max  Miiller,  after  a  wide  survey 
of  the  field,  says  that  '  Plato's  Kratylus  is  full  of 
suggestive  wisdom ;  it  is  one  of  those  books  which, 
as  we  read  them  again  from  time  to  time,  seem  every 
time  like  new  books,  so  little  do  we  perceive  at  first 
all  that  is  presupposed  in  them :  the  accumulated 
mould  of  thought,  if  I  may  say  so,  in  which  alone 
a  philosophy  like  that  of  Plato  would  strike  its  roots 


46  CLASSICS  AND   COLLEGES. 

and  draw  its  support.'  So  far  as  the  character  and 
origin  of  language  are  concerned,  we  are  little 
advanced  beyond  the  earliest  speculators  on  the 
subject ;  and  while  the  ancients  knew  little  of  exper 
imental  science,  while  they  had  no  proper  concep 
tion  of  the  right  method  of  putting  nature  on  the 
rack,  nature  seems  after  all  to  refuse  to  our  severest 
torture  the  last  secret  which  the  ancients  sought  to 
elicit  by  divination,  and  while  renunciation  is  often 
the  wisest  course  as  to  certain  problems,  renuncia 
tion  is  not  superiority.  But  this  is  a  direction  which 
it  would  not  be  safe  to  urge.  In  physical  science, 
as  in  music,  as  in  painting,  the  moderns  may  be 
supposed  to  have  everything  their  own  way.  *  The 
history  of  sciences ',  says  Goethe, '  is  a  grand  fugue, 
in  which  the  voices  of  the  peoples  come  in  one  by 
one ';  and  he  who  has  no  appreciation  of  the  wealth 
of  his  own  time  has  no  right  to  speak  of  the  value 
of  antiquity  for  all  time. 

In  ethics  and  politics  we  have  had,  it  is  true,  the 
experience  of  centuries  ;  but  man  in  his  essence  has 
not  changed,  and  in  the  ethical  and  political  obser 
vations  of  those  who  stood,  as  it  were,  nearer  to 
the  nakedness  of  the  soul  as  their  art  was  more 
familiar  with  the  nakedness  of  the  body,  there  is  a 
keenness  of  insight,  a  sagacity  of  counsel,  from 
which  we  can  still  learn.  '  The  discoveries  of  the 
ancients  in  science',  says  Stuart  Mill,  'have  been 
greatly  surpassed,  and  as  much  of  them  as  is  still 
valuable  loses  nothing  by  being  incorporated  in 
modern  treatises ;  but  what  does  not  so  well  admit 
of  being  transferred  bodily,  and  has  been  very  imper 
fectly  carried  off  even  piecemeal,  is  the  treasure 


CLASSICS  AND   COLLEGES.  4/ 

which  they  accumulated  of  what  may  be  called  the 
wisdom  of  life;  the  rich  store  of  experience  of 
human  nature  and  conduct,  which  the  acute  and 
observing  minds  of  those  ages,  aided  in  their  obser 
vations  by  the  greater  simplicity  of  manners  and 
life,  consigned  to  their  writings,  and  most  of  which 
retains  all  its  value.  The  speeches  in  Thucydides ; 
the  Rhetoric,  Ethics,  and  Politics  of  Aristotle ;  the 
Dialogues  of  Plato ;  the  Orations  of  Demosthenes ; 
the  Satires  and  especially  the  Epistles  of  Horace ; 
all  the  writings  of  Tacitus ;  the  great  work  of  Quin- 
tilian,  a  repertory  of  the  best  thoughts  of  the  ancient 
world  on  all  subjects  connected  with  education  ; 
and  in  a  less  formal  manner  all  that  is  left  us  of  the 
ancient  historians,  orators,  philosophers,  and  even 
dramatists, — are  replete  with  remarks  and  maxims 
of  singular  good  sense  and  penetration,  applicable 
both  to  political  and  private  life.'  Of  these,  it  may 
be  remarked  here  that  Quintilian  never  fails  to  sur 
prise  the  few — and  there  are  comparatively  few, 
including  professional  scholars — the  few  who  read 
more  than  the  famous  first  chapter  of  the  tenth 
book ;  and  the  distinguished  thinker  just  quoted 
bears  emphatic  testimony  to  the  effect  produced  on 
his  youthful  mind  by  the  perusal  of  the  Institutions, 
and  says  that  he  '  retained  through  life  many  val 
uable  ideas '  which  he  traced  distinctly  to  read 
ing  Quintilian  at  an  early  age.  We  have  known 
mature  men  of  fine  intellect  and  ripe  judgment  to 
be  astonished  and  fascinated  by  the  political  insight 
of  Thucydides  when  they  returned  to  him  after  a 
long  interval;  and  Arnold  was  right  when  he 
remarked  that  the  portion  of  history  dealt  with  by 
Thucydides  is  only  ancient  in  the  sense  that  the 


48  CLASSICS  AND    COLLEGES. 

events  related  happened  a  long  while  ago.  '  If  the 
reader  of  the  newspaper',  says  Mr.  Crawley,  in  the 
preface  to  his  spirited  rendering  of  Thucydides, 
'  will  condescend  to  cast  an  eye  on  my  translation, 
he  will  find  there  the  prototypes  of  many  of  the 
figures  to  which  he  is  accustomed  in  his  favorite 
journal.  He  will  discover  the  political  freedom 
which  he  glories  in,  and  the  social  liberty  which  he 
sometimes  sighs  for,  in  full  operation  at  Athens ; 
factions  as  fierce  as  those  of  the  Versaillais  and 
Communists  at  Corcyra ;  and  in  the  "  best  men  "  of 
the  Four  Hundred,  oligarchs  as  self-seeking  and 
unpatriotic  as  the  gensdu  bien  of  the  "  Figaro".  .  .  . 
In  short,  besides  the  practical  lessons  to  be  drawn 
for  his  own  conduct,  he  will  enjoy  the  philosophic 
pleasure  of  observing  how  the  nature  of  man,  in 
spite  of  all  change  of  time  and  circumstance,  remains 
essentially  the  same,  and  how  short  is  the  distance 
from  the  civilized  inhabitant  of  Athens  or  Corinth 
to  the  dweller  in  London  or  Vienna.' 

It  may  not  be  safe  to  insist  on  the  value  of  the 
ancients  as  types  of  literary  excellence,  or  to 
enlarge  on  the  powerful  influence  of  their  perfect 
and  finished  diction.  The  value  is  great  and  the 
influence  wholesome;  but,  unfortunately,  artistic 
power  and  the  appreciation  of  art  do  not  always 
go  together,  and  the  classic  training  of  most 
authors  has  actually  brought  the  stylistic  usefulness 
of  the  ancients  into  discredit  in  the  eyes  of  those 
who  do  not  reflect  that  good  models  are  not  every 
thing,  nor  even  an  appreciation  of  good  models. 
So  Mark  Pattison,  in  his  clever  essay,  '  Books  and 
Critics ',  in  the  Fortnightly  Review  for  November, 
1877,  says :  '  It  is  one  of  the  paradoxes  of  literary 


CLASSICS   AND    COLLEGES.  49 

history,  that  in  this  very  country — Germany — which 
is  the  world's  schoolmaster  in  learning  the  Greek 
and  Latin  languages,  so  little  of  the  style  and  beauty 
of  these  immortal  models  passes  into  their  litera 
ture';  and  Mr.  Spencer  cites  among  his  examples 
of  the  disproportion  of  results  and  appliances  the 
case  of  commentators  of  the  classics,  '  who  are 
among  the  most  slovenly  writers  of  English ',  and 
asks  whether  the  self-made  Cobbett  would  be  guilty 
of  the  awkwardness  of  a  Queen's  speech,  or  the 
ploughman  Burns  or  Bunyan  the  tinker  blunder  in 
his  diction  like  the  head-master  of  Winchester  or 
some  English  bishop  whom  he  cites.  The  question 
is  a  question  of  faculty,  not  of  training  alone ;  and 
it  is  not  fair  to  pick  out  the  exceptional  men  of 
genius  whose  education  has  not  brought  them  into 
direct  contact  with  ancient  literature,  and  hold  them 
up  in  triumphant  contrast  with  those  to  whom 
nature  has  denied,  not  the  susceptibility  of  form, 
but  the  power  of  classic  reproduction.  It  is  cer 
tainly  claiming  too  much  for  the  classics  to  attribute 
to  them  the  creation  of  artistic  faculty.  It  is  enough 
to  assert  their  moulding  influence  when  the  artistic 
faculty  is  there ;  and  it  is  hardly  worth  while  to 
notice  the  theory  which  has  actually  been  advanced 
that  the  slovenly  style  of  the  literary  class  in  Ger 
many  is  due  to  their  excessive  study  of  Greek.  So 
far  as  the  decline  of  English  among  scholars  is  con 
cerned,  the  large  infusion  of  German  in  certain 
leading  English  journals  has  much  more  to  do  with 
it  than  anything  else.1 

From  the  purely  stylistic  point  of  view,  it  is  a  pity  that 
most  of  our  American  philologians,  having  been  trained,  if  not 
in  Germany,  yet  under  German  influences,  should  be  so  prone 


5O  CLASSICS  AND    COLLEGES. 

The  leisurely  care  with  which  the  foremost  men 
of  antique  literature  elaborated  their  great  works 
enabled  them  to  attain  an  artistic  perfection  which 
will  remain  an  eternal  norm,1  and  the  lover  of  the 
antique  might  maintain  that  they  are  as  unap 
proachable  here  as  they  are  confessedly  in  plastic 
art.  But  there  the  domination  of  the  Greek  is  a 
commonplace.  If  they  made  poor  work,  as  Littrow 
says,  of  counting  the  stars  even  with  their  clear 
heavens  and  the  sweep  of  a  wider  sky,  they  saw  so 
clearly  and  reproduced  so  wonderfully  the  play  of 
masculine  muscle  and  the  sinuous  lines  of  female 
beauty,  that  there  have  been  found  men  to  maintain 

to  neglect  philological  work  that  is  done  in  France.  It  is  a 
gratuitous  assumption  that  all  Frenchmen  are  superficial ;  all 
can  learn  from  the  French,  not  only  in  methods  of  presenta 
tion,  but  in  delicate  analysis  of  social  conditions,  personal 
character,  literary  style  ;  and  many  a  French  e"tude  conveys 
under  a  graceful  and  popular  form  suggestions  of  wide  scope 
and  deep  significance. 

1  In  a  recent  critique  on  George  Sand,  in  the  Revue  des  Deux 
Mondes,  M.  d'Haussonville,  no  blind  admirer  of  the  great 
author  whom  he  is  reviewing,  says  :  '  Rien  ne  dure  en  eff  et  que 
ce  qui  est  bien  compose.  Si  les  formes  vieillissent,  si  les 
idees  changent,  les  lois  de  la  composition  sont  eternelles  ; 
1'esprit  humain,  mobile  dans  ses  gouts,  est  toujours  constant 
dans  ses  precedes.  Les  operations  de  la  logique  sont  les 
memes  aujourd'hui  qu'au  temps  d'Aristote,  et  les  preceptes  de 
rhetorique,  qui  ont  cours  dans  nos  ecoles  ne  different  pas  de 
ceux  que  la  jeunesse  studieuse  recueillait  autrefois  sous  les 
portiques  d'Athenes  et  de  Rome.  Celui  qui  se  fait  un  jeu  de 
ces  preceptes  et  qui  ne  sait  discerner  1'eternelle  verite  des  lois 
cachees  sur  leurs  formules  arides  pourra  peut-e'tre  surprendre 
un  succes  d'un  jour  :  mais  il  s'exposera  a  voir  couler  tot  ou 
tard  sa  reputation  fragile,  comme  un  edifice  dont  1'architecte 
aurait  embelli  la  facade  sans  en  asseoir  la  base  d'apres  les 
lois  de  1'equilibre  geometrique.' 


CLASSICS  AND    COLLEGES.  51 

that  such  perfection  was  impossible  without  regular 
anatomical  studies.  It  is  bewildering  to  think  what 
their  art  must  have  been  when  the  mere  mechanical 
repetition  of  it  in  a  little  Oscan  town  fills  the  world 
with  wonder,  when  the  shovel  and  the  pick  are 
revealing  every  day  in  obscure  corners  of  classic 
ground  the  evidence  of  a  wealth  that  staggers  our 
imagination.  We  need  not  resort  to  the  unearthed 
glories  of  Olympia,  where  we  might  expect  to  find 
the  noblest  treasures  of  Greek  art.  Go  to  Tanagra. 
Where  is  Tanagra  ?  It  is  a  poor  town  in  Eastern 
Bceotia,  and  is  remembered  by  the  Greek  scholar 
chiefly  because  of  Corinna,  by  the  Greek  antiquary 
because  of  a  famous  breed  of  fighting-cocks,  by  the 
Greek  historian  because  of  a  battle  fought  in  the 
neighborhood.  Strike  into  the  soil,  open  the  tombs 
of  the  dead,  and  you  bring  to  light  thousands  of 
statuettes  which  breathe  the  infinite  charis  of  Greek  - 
dom ;  and  it  is  said  by  experts  that  a  new  era  of 
*  art-industry ' — as  our  German-English  has  it — is 
to  begin  with  this  find  of  terra-cottas  in  a  miserable 
third-rate  town  of  Boeotia,  that  Bceotia  which  we 
have  been  taught  by  the  quick-witted  Athenians  to 
laugh  at.  It  hardly  seems  quite  safe  to  laugh  at  the 
Bceotians.1 

Inevitable,  then,  as  part  and  parcel  of  our  own 
civilization,  indispensable  as  exemplars  in  those  lines 
of  achievement  which  are  peculiarly  their  own,  the 
ancient  classics  furnish  us,  besides  all  this,  with 
the  best  gymnasium  for  the  exercise  of  the  mental 

aBergk,  in  his  '  Griechische  Literaturgeschichte',  i.  916,  has 
some  good  remarks  on  the  Boeotians,  in  modification  of  current 


52  CLASSICS  AND   COLLEGES. 

faculties,  as  well  as  the  fairest  theatre  for  the  culture 
of  aesthetic  appreciation.  But  it  would  be  impossible, 
within  the  compass  of  a  single  essay,  even  to  review 
the  arguments  in  favor  of  the  disciplinary  value  of 
the  classics  and  the  classic  languages  of  antiquity  ; 
and  it  is  the  opinion  of  the  writer  that  this  has  been 
made,  if  anything,  too  prominent  in  the  discussion. 
At  all  events,  if  it  can  be  shown  that  the  classics 
have  an  intrinsic  value  of  their  own,  it  will  be  unne 
cessary  to  defend  what  has  been  called  by  an  assail 
ant  of  the  classics  '  the  wasteful  policy  of  a  vicarious 
discipline'.  And  here  it  maybe  noted  that  those 
who  have  insisted  most  eloquently  on  the  expulsion 
of  the  classics  from  the  curriculum,  who  would  bid 
Greek  make  way  for  German  and  reduce  Latin  to 
the  smallest  possible  modicum,  are  for  the  most  part 
men  who,  themselves  reared  in  the  atmosphere  of 
classical  studies,  cannot  appreciate  the  extent  to 
which  they  are  indebted,  directly  or  indirectly,  to 
the  very  training  they  despise.  The  phraseology 
of  our  language  was  fixed  by  scholars,  and  in  its 
higher  ranges  can  only  be  extended  by  scholars ; 
and  if  the  control  exercised  by  classical  scholarship 
should  be  forever  removed,  our  noble  tongue  would 
become  a  jangle  of  false  notes  or  a  rattling  vul 
garity  of  slang.  Like  those  who  tell  us  that  we  can 
now  at  last  afford  to  dispense  with  religion,  and  who 
point  to  the  noble  lives  led  by  men  who  yield  no 
allegiance  to  Christianity  or  even  to  theistic  princi 
ples,  these  eloquent  denouncers  of  the  classics  forget 
that  the  one  experiment  as  well  as  the  other  requires 
a  vacuum,  and  that  the  vacuum  is  not  yet ;  nor  can 
we  forecast  the  time  when  it  will  be  possible  to 


CLASSICS  AND    COLLEGES.  53 

eliminate  the  classical  influences  that  permeate  every 
nook  and  corner  of  our  intellectual  domain.  Until 
then  it  will  be  in  vain  to  cite  personal  examples  by 
way  of  proof  that  the  highest  results  of  modern  cul 
ture  can  be  attained  without  the  classics ;  and  it  will 
be  necessary  for  the  advocates  of  the  new  education 
to  make  large  concessions  to  the  old  models,  or  to 
throw  themselves  without  reserve  into  the  arms  of  a 
brutal  materialism.  There  is  really  no  other  course ; 
for  it  is  evident  that  there  is  no  better  school  of 
form  than  we  find  in  the  history,  the  literature,  and 
the  art  of  the  Greeks. 

Even  Mr.  Huxley,  in  his  lecture  at  the  Johns 
Hopkins  University,  had  something  to  say  in  behalf 
of  aesthetic  culture;  and  although  sestheticism  is  not 
the  satisfying  portion  of  man,  as  an  immortal  being, 
such  a  concession  is  something  as  a  sign  of  the 
times ;  and  it  really  seems  as  if  some  of  the  devo 
tees  of  the  new  education,  to  use  again  a  favorite 
phrase,  were  beginning  to  feel  the  danger  of  the 
utter  breakdown  of  physical  science  itself,  if  the 
present  narrow  methods  of  study  be  persisted  in. 
The  cry  of  alarm  has  been  raised  by  more  than  one 
voice  in  Germany.  So  in  a  discourse  by  Emil  du 
Bois-Reymond,  the  well-known  Berlin  professor,  a 
tissue  of  rhetorical  generalities  about  the  history  of 
culture  and  natural  science,  there  are  some  signifi 
cant  admissions  which  it  may  be  well  to  notice. 
Since  the  late  war  with  France  it  is  no  secret  that 
the  land  of  scholars  has  lost  much  of  its  attraction 
in  the  eyes  of  scholars,  because  it  has  become  so 
strong,  so  despotic.  '  Brutal '  is  a  hard  word,  but  the 
type  of  German  materialism  is  the  most  brutal  of 


54  CLASSICS  AND   COLLEGES. 

all.  In  old  times  we  might  laugh  at  the  provin 
cialisms,  the  pettinesses,  the  local  patriotisms,  the 
narrower  fatherlands,  the  kinglets  and  the  prince- 
lets  with  their  select  society  of  subjects,  the  minus 
cule  aulic  councillors  of  pocket-handkerchief  duke 
doms,  the  upper-court-chimney-sweepers  of  a  micro 
scopic  Transparency,  the  cab-load  which  constituted 
the  contingent  of  this  or  that  impotent  potentate 
to  the  federal  army ;  but  the  life  of  those  days  had 
a  charm  which  the  new  life  has  not.  The  political 
activity  for  which  the  Germans  yearned  so  many  years 
is  nothing  so  glorious  now  that  they  have  it,  and 
men  begin  to  turn  their  eyes  sadly  to  the  despised 
past.  '  Germany ',  cries  our  Berlin  professor,  '  Ger 
many  has  become  united  and  strong,  and  the  wish 
of  our  youth  to  see  the  German  name  honored  on 
land  and  sea  has  been  fulfilled.  Who  would  like  to 
pick  flaws  in  such  achievements  ?  And  yet,  if  we 
transport  ourselves  in  imagination  to  the  rent,  poor, 
powerless,  kleinbiirgerlich  Germany  of  our  youth,  as 
it  were,  out  of  the  cold  splendor  of  the  imperial  city 
into  the  midst  of  the  nestling,  cosey  gable-roofs  of  a 
little  town  of  central  Germany  embowered  in  vines 
and  ivy,  do  we  not  feel  that  something  is  lacking  in 
the  present,  with  its  glitter,  its  intoxication,  its 
tumult?  We  have  got  rid  of  the  undefined  long 
ing,  the  unsatisfied  endeavor,  the  corroding  doubt 
of  our  own  power,  and  with  these  of  much  of  our 
enthusiasm  for  ideals,  our  unselfish  striving  after 
truth,  our  quiet  and  deep  inner  life.'  And  this  is 
but  one  voice  among  many  voices,  which  are  inex 
pressibly  sad  to  any  one  who,  like  the  writer,  owes 
all  the  best  impulses  of  his  intellectual  life  to  the 


CLASSICS  AND    COLLEGES.  55 

contact  with  German  ideals.  Twenty-eight  years 
ago x  Germany  was  in  deep  humiliation,  and  these 
lines  are  written  in  front  of  a  memorial  of  the 
unhappy  Schleswig-Holstein  troubles.  It  is  a  leaf 
from  the  Schleswig-Holstein  album,  and  the  design  is 
by  Julius  Hiibner,  the  celebrated  painter  of  Dresden. 
It  represents  a  queenly  figure,  prostrate  in  the  dust, 
discrowned,  unsceptred,  abandoned  to  hopeless  sor 
row,  weighed  down  by  a  load  of  grief  and  shame, 
and  the  legend  is  from  the  Lamentations  of  Jere 
miah:  'The  crown  is  fallen  from  our  head.'  It  is 
otherwise  now.  The  grand  figure  is  upright,  but 
the  pickelhaube  is  on  the  head,  not  the  crown ;  the 
sceptre  is  a  truncheon,  and  the  features  are  not  the 
features  of  Mother  Germany,  but  of  Prince  Bis 
marck  ;  and  many  who  sorrowed  deeply  with  Ger 
many's  sorrow  then  cannot  find  it  in  their  hearts  to 
triumph  unreservedly  in  Germany's  triumph  now. 
All  the  gold  that  France  has  paid,  or  can  pay,  were 
a  poor  exchange  for  the  treasure  of  German  idealism, 
unbankable  as  it  is.  And  the  Germans  feel  it  them 
selves,  and  if  anything  were  needed  to  show  this, 
the  frantic  revival  of  metaphysics  in  Germany  would 
suffice  to  indicate  it.  Leading  men  are  calling  halt 
to  their  followers,  and  are  deprecating  the  rash 
advance  of  partisan  chieftains  upon  ground  over 
which  there  once  brooded  a  sacred  peace. 

The  author  to  whose  performance  reference  has 
been  already  made  in  this  paper,  and  who  has  given 
most  recent  expression  to  the  tendencies  of  the  times, 
Professor  du  Bois-Reymond,  frankly  acknowledges 
that '  where  physical  science  reigns  exclusively,  the 

1  Written  in  1878.— B.  L.  G. 


56  CLASSICS  AND    COLLEGES. 

intellect  becomes  poor  in  ideas,  the  fancy  in  images, 
the  soul  in  sensibility,  and  the  result  is  a  narrow, 
hard  and  dry  disposition,  forsaken  of  the  Muses  and 
Graces ;  and  not  only  so,  but  physical  science  leads 
down  by  imperceptible  gradations  from  the  highest 
efforts  of  human  intellect  to  mere  mechanical  work 
that  looks  at  nothing  beyond  gain.' 

It  is  not  a  pleasant  hearing  for  Americans,  who  are 
persuaded  better  things  of  their  country,  to  be  told 
by  our  Berlin  professor  that  this  tendency  to  mate 
rialism,  this  preference  of  the  immediate  and  practi 
cal  to  the  remote  and  theoretical,  in  short,  all  that  is 
hard  and  realistic  and  '  unbeautiful '  in  the  recent 
development  of  life  is  called  Americanism,  and  that 
those  Americans  who  do  not  share  these  tendencies 
are  simply  set  down  as  un-American.  And  yet  the 
statement  is  but  too  true.  The  German  author  of  a 
text-book,  in  reply  to  the  reproach  that  his  work  was 
not  sufficiently  adapted  to  the  wants  of  the  school  on 
account  of  the  introduction  of  the  scientific  exhibi 
tion  of  the  forms  of  the  language,  pointed  with 
triumph  to  the  fact  that  his  book  had  been  translated 
in  this  country,  and  urged  that  what  the  '  practical 
American  '  found  available  here  would  certainly  not 
be  found  unpractical  in  Germany.1  The  compli 
ment  to  the  American  that  American  hardly  de 
served,  and  it  is  very  certain  that  he  winced  a  little 
at  the  use  which  was  made  of  his  nationality.  At  all 
events  the  existence  of  such  an  organ  as  this  Review,2 
which  is  surely  not  dedicated  to  themes  of  merely 

1  The  author  was  H.  J.  Muller,  the  '  practical  American'  the 
writer  of  these  essays. — B.  L.  G. 

2  The  Princeton  Review. 


CLASSICS  AND    COLLEGES.  $? 

popular  interest,  is  an  evidence  that  there  is  an  ele 
ment  in  this  country  which  is  not  in  harmony  with 
the  supposed  characteristics  of  our  people ;  and  after 
all,  a  careful  survey  of  our  intellectual  life  will  show 
that,  considering  the  imperious  necessities  of  our 
position,  there  is  a  large  and  increasing  factor  of 
idealism,  and  that  Americans  are  in  less  danger  from 
Americanism  than  the  Germans  are.  At  any  rate, 
the  method  which  Professor  du  Bois-Reymond  sug 
gests  to  meet  the  case  and  to  stay  the  progress  of 
Americanism  in  Germany  and  restore  idealism  to  its 
rightful  place  seems  to  an  outsider  amusing,  to  say 
the  least.  Of  course  he  begins  with  a  reform  of 
secondary  instruction  as  the  indispensable  prelimi 
nary  to  the  revival  of  higher  life,  and  then  recom 
mends  a  modification  of  the  course  of  study  at  the 
gymnasium  which  shall  give  more  scope  to  mathe 
matics,  encourage  the  object-method  of  teaching  the 
classics  through  pictures  and  casts  from  the  antique, 
do  away  with  instruction  in  religion  for  the  higher 
classes  and  with  the  close  grammatical  study  of 
Greek ;  and,  finally,  to  make  sure  that  everybody 
will  understand  him,  he  raises  a  banner  with  this  de 
vice — strange  perhaps  in  Germany,  not  strange  here : 
'CONIC  SECTIONS!  NO  MORE  GREEK 
EXERCISES  ! '  To  an  American  it  certainly  seems 
droll  that  a  German  professor  should  select  as  the 
best  plan  for  counteracting  Americanism  the  very 
course  which  was  almost  uniformly  followed  in  the 
higher  classes  of  American  colleges  in  our  youth. 

It  is  hardly  worth  while  to  discuss  at  length  this 
method  of  saving  German  culture  from  the  sinister 
influences  of  Americanism,  and  yet  it  may  be  not 


$8  CLASSICS  AND   COLLEGES. 

altogether  out  of  place  to  say  a  word  or  two  touch 
ing  the  element  of  Greek  exercises,  which  of  late 
years  has  been  gaining  rather  than  losing  ground 
in  our  American  colleges  and  high-schools,  thanks 
to  the  earnest  conviction,  on  the  part  of  our  best 
teachers,  that  no  thorough  mastery  of  a  language 
as  a  source  of  culture  is  possible  without  the  power  to 
use  it  within  certain  limits.  To  insist,  for  instance, 
as  some  English  scholars  do,  on  an  early  facility  in 
the  manufacture  of  Greek  verses  as  a  prerequisite  to 
the  successful  criticism  of  the  Greek  drama  is  going 
too  far ;  and  yet  it  is  by  no  means  certain  that  the 
practice  of  verse-making  has  not  been  too  much 
neglected  on  the  Continent,  and  the  false  quantities 
that  are  becoming  more  and  more  common  in 
text-books  mark  a  decline  in  exact  scholarship  that 
is  not  an  edifying  sign  of  the  times.  But  whatever 
we  may  think  of  verse-making  as  a  school  exercise, 
the  command  of  the  grammatical  structure  of  a 
Latin  or  Greek  sentence  cannot  be  gained  in  any 
way  so  surely  as  by  writing ;  and  when  we  remem 
ber  that  language  is  the  truest  expression  of  the 
life  of  a  people,  we  shall  begin  to  appreciate  the 
fundamental  importance  of  an  exercise  which,  as  a 
matter  of  course,  is  hardly  congenial  to  the  young 
student.  True,  antiquity  can  be  approached  from 
many  sides,  and  he  is  a  pedant  who  thinks  that  his 
avenue  alone  leads  to  the  shrine  ;  but  all  the  advan 
tages  of  Hellenism  for  higher  culture  cannot  be 
gained  by  the  study  of  casts  of  the  Panathenaic  pro 
cession,  or  photographs  of  the  Nike  of  Paionios.  It 
is  not  sufficient  to  say  that '  Goethe  and  Thorwald- 
sen  could  not  write  a  Greek  exercise,  and  yet  had  a 


CLASSICS  AND    COLLEGES.  $9 

better  insight  into  the  secrets  of  Hellenic  art  than 
many  who  profess  and  call  themselves  Grecians/ 
Goethe,  for  that  matter,  did  write  Greek  exercises, 
and  it  is  to  be  feared  that  many  lads  enter  college 
with  worse  preparation  in  Greek  than  is  indicated  by 
the  Frankfurt  schoolboy's  efforts  at  Greek  composi 
tion.  But  even  if  Goethe  had  written  his  Iphigenie 
without  Greek,  as  Thorwaldsen  made  his  Triumph 
of  Alexander  without  Greek,  such  examples  have 
really  no  application  to  the  question  before  us.  The 
training  we  seek  in  colleges  is  not  for  the  geniuses 
of  the  world,  who  after  all  go  their  own  way,  but  for 
men  of  certain  average  capacity ;  and,  granted  the 
value  of  a  knowledge 'of  Greek,  for  them  there  is 
really  no  shorter  way,  we  repeat,  to  a  real  grasp  of 
the  language  than  a  certain  amount  of  Greek  exer 
cise-writing.  Not  that  the  advantage  of  a  mere 
reading  knowledge  of  Greek  is  to  be  underrated. 
Too  few  have  that  as  it  is.  But  Greek  and  Latin 
stand  on  a  different  footing  from  modern  languages. 
Most  cultivated  men  have  a  certain  knowledge  of 
several  modern  languages,  which  they  find  very 
useful  in  a  literary  sense,  even  if  they  are  not  able  to 
go  through  the  paradigm  of  the  verb  successfully, 
and  would  utterly  break  down  in  the  composition 
of  a  single  sentence.  But  it  is  much  less  easy  to 
penetrate  into  the  subtleties  of  antique  diction  with 
out  the  close  grammatical  study  which  reproduction 
postulates ;  and  while  life  may  be  too  short  and  too 
crowded  for  the  manufacture  of  Latin  and  Greek 
verse  where  there  is  no  inner  vocation,  we  must 
erase  from  our  banner  the  iconoclastic  motto,  '  No 
MORE  GREEK  EXERCISES'. 


6O  CLASSICS  AND    COLLEGES. 

But  although  our  intellectual  development  is  more 
influenced  by  the  thought  of  Germany  than  by  that 
of  any  other  country,  our  concern  in  this  paper  is 
not  so  much  with  the  best  methods  of  checking 
materialism  there,  as  with  the  prospects  of  classical 
study  as  an  element  of  culture  here ;  and  the  out 
look  is  not  nearly  so  discouraging  as  it  might  seem 
at  first.  It  is  true  that  the  classical  philologians  of 
this  country  do  not  appear  to  have  risen  yet  to  the 
full  measure  of  their  duty  and  their  privilege,  but 
there  is  undoubtedly  a  notable  increase  in  the  num 
ber  of  scientifically  trained  teachers  of  the  classics, 
and  a  higher  type  of  technical  scholarship  through 
out  America.  On  the  side  -of  literature,  of  culture, 
there  has  not  been  the  same  advance  in  this  country, 
but  in  view  of  the  active  intercourse  between  Eng 
land  and  America,  we  cannot  overlook  the  fact  that 
in  contemporary  English  literature  there  is  a  far  more 
intimate  acquaintance  with  the  spirit  of  Greek  art 
than  can  be  found  at  any  period  of  English  letters. 
Indeed,  so  strong  a  ply  has  English  thought  taken 
in  this  direction,  that  forebodings  have  been  ex 
pressed  lest  our  faith  should  be  overwhelmed  by  an 
Aryan  revival.  At  any  rate,  the  best  contemporary 
poetry  of  the  mother-country  is  saturated  with 
Greek.  Tennyson  and  Browning,  Swinburne  and 
Morris,  the  older  and  the  younger  singers  of  our 
time,  draw  much  of  their  inspiration,  some  of  them 
much  of  their  technic  from  Greek  poetry;  and 
although  it  must  be  acknowledged  in  all  fairness 
that  the  result  is  after  all  exotic,  and  that  this  Neo- 
Hellenic  school  is  too  scholarly,  too  reflective,  too 
consciously  artistic,  the  movement  shows  that  the 


CLASSICS  AND    COLLEGES.  6l 

time  is  not  yet  come  for  the  elimination  of  the 
classics  from  the  formal  education  of  the  college  and 
the  larger  discipline  of  the  cultured  world.  But 
despite  all  the  philological  science  that  comes  from 
Germany,  and  all  the  potent  influence  of  English 
poetry,  it  does  not  seem  as  if  we  were  deriving  the 
full  benefit  from  either  element,  and  it  is  the  purpose 
of  this  paper  to  inquire  somewhat  more  narrowly 
into  the  causes,  so  far  as  they  may  be  supposed  to 
lie  in  the  present  organization  of  our  higher  insti 
tutions  of  learning.  In  a  recent  address  on  the 
failure  and  the  future  of  American  scholarship,1  the 
writer  of  this  essay  limited  himself  chiefly  to  the 
statement  of  what  he  conceived  to  be  the  shortcom 
ings  of  those  who  represent  the  classics  in  this 
country :  the  lack  of  independent  research,  the 
wholesale  conveyance  of  foreign  work,  the  limited 
range  of  study,  the  mechanical  multiplication  of 
text-books,  the  want  of  honest,  manly  criticism. 
There  may  have  been  bitterness  in  the  tone ;  but  if 
so,  the  bitterness  was  that  of  confession,  not  of 
satire.  It  was  a  nos  consules  desumus  from  begin 
ning  to  end.  True,  it  was  intimated  that  the  sys 
tem  under  which  our  classical  scholars  have  been 
working  is  not  the  best  in  the  world ;  but,  after  all, 
the  moral  delinquencies  of  the  instructors  them 
selves  formed  the  staple  of  animadversion,  and 
perhaps  not  unwisely.  It  is  best  not  to  portion  out 
faults,  as  that  leads  to  a  fatal  easing  of  conscience. 
Lay  all  the  blame  boldly  everywhere.  And  so  this 
time  it  may  be  as  well  to  turn  our  attention  to  the 
sphere  in  which  American  philologians  are  called 

1  Delivered  before  the  Literary  Societies   of   Princeton  in 

1877. 


62  CLASSICS  AMD    COLLEGES. 

to  work — the  colleges  of  the  land.  For,  with  rare 
exceptions,  our  philologians  are  teachers,  and 
teachers  under  conditions  which  resemble  more  or 
less  those  of  the  gymnasia  of  Germany.  They  are 
sckulmanner  first,  philologians  afterwards.  That 
the  two  characters  are  not  incompatible  is  shown 
by  many  illustrious  examples.  Take  Ahrens  for 
Greek ;  take  Corssen  for  Latin.  But  such  men  are 
in  the  full  current  of  university  influence,  so  far  as 
their  higher  work  is  concerned,  and  that  is  not  true  of 
our  philologians.  The  foremost  philologian  that  this 
country  has  ever  produced,  Professor  Whitney,  has 
had  to  keep  his  scientific  work  alive  amid  a  pressure 
of  scholastic  duties  and  a  whirl  of  mechanical  engage 
ments,  which  may  enhance  our  admiration  of  his 
steadfastness  and  his  power,  which  cannot  but  make 
us  rebellious  against  a  system  so  exacting,  so  re 
lentless.  This  system  is  so  contrived  as  to  sacrifice 
the  teacher  to  the  supposed  good  of  the  pupil,  and 
like  all  such  immoral  arrangements,  injures  both 
alike.  A  heavy  indictment  to  bring  against  the 
traditional  methods  of  our  colleges ;  but  there  can 
be  very  little  doubt  in  the  mind  of  any  one  who  will 
look  seriously  into  the  matter,  that  our  colleges  are 
not  promoting  the  love  of  the  classics  in  the  student, 
and  are  not  fostering  the  scientific  spirit  of  the 
teacher ;  that  the  actual  contact  of  the  average  mind 
with  classic  life  is  less  than  it  was,  say  twenty-five 
years  ago,  and  that  the  best  men  we  have  are  doing 
little  to  push  forward  the  lines  of  human  knowledge 
in  their  departments.  It  seems  impossible  not  to 
recognize  this  state  of  things,  and  recognizing  it, 
not  to  seek  some  remedy.  Laudations  of  the 


CLASSICS  AND    COLLEGES.  63 

classics,  however  well  meant,  are  of  little  avail  for 
the  student,  and  the  contio  ad  clerum,  no  matter  how 
loudly  intoned,  falls  dead  on  the  ear  of  the  deaf  or 
drowsy  teacher.  The  only  hope  is  the  redistribution 
of  the  work  of  the  teachers,  and  that  is  a  theme 
which  has  not  yet  lost  all  its  interest,  as  is  shown 
by  the  perennial  discussion  of  the  subject  in  the 
public  press.  To  this  discussion  the  present  writer 
brings  little  more  than  his  personal  experience  and 
personal  conviction,  and  he  has  not  been  at  the 
pains  to  compile  masses  of  statistics  nor  to  marshal 
authorities  to  sustain  his  position.  Statistics  can  be 
made  to  prove  anything  if  properly  manipulated, 
and  as  they  are  valueless  when  they  formulate  no 
organic  principle,  so  they  are  apt  to  be  too  significant 
when  they  are  significant  at  all.  The  toilsome  accu 
mulation  of  facts  and  opinions  to  sustain  precon 
ceived  notions  may  pass  with  the  undiscerning  for 
laborious  induction.  Here,  although  use  will  be 
made  of  such  statistics  and  authorities  as  happen  to 
be  at  hand,  there  will  be  no  ambitious  attempt  to 
represent  the  individual  impression  as  the  result  of 
long  and  careful  research,  nor  even  of  a  steady 
course  of  thinking  on  the  subject.  *  Ich  habe  nie  iiber 
das  Denken  gedacht ',  said  Goethe ;  and  the  writer 
belongs  to  those  teachers  who  have  never  taught 
about  teaching,  whose  conclusions  as  to  the  needs 
of  the  higher  education  have  been  forced  upon  them 
by  the  manifest  exigencies  of  the  practical  prob 
lems  which  they  have  had  to  encounter.  These  con 
clusions  are  not  new,  and  yet  they  may  possibly  be 
worth  registering  as  material  for  a  more  elaborate 
exposition  of  the  subject. 


64  CLASSICS  AND    COLLEGES. 

It  is  high  time  to  recognize  practically  the  differ 
ence  between  college  and  university  work,  as  those 
terms  are  or  ought  to  be  understood  in  this  country 
— the  difference  between  the  stage  of  mere  appro 
priation  and  the  stage  in  which  appropriation 
becomes  assimilation,  and  assimilation  results  in 
constructive  effort.  The  curriculum  must  be  simpli 
fied  for  the  college  side ;  the  elective  principle  must 
be  the  norm  of  the  university  side.  There  must  be 
no  such  incongruous  blending  of  the  two  as  is  seen 
all  over  the  country,  so  that  it  would  not  be  hard  to 
point  out  institutions  in  which  college  work  is  done 
on  university  principles  and  university  work  is  done 
on  college  principles.  There  are  things  that  must 
be  learned  by  a  dead  pull,  and  no  amount  of  scien 
tific  presentation  will  be  of  any  practical  avail ;  and 
on  the  other  hand,  there  are  high  ranges  that  cannot 
be  traversed  without  the  discursive  faculty. 

To  attain  this  end — separating  university  and 
college — a  thorough  reform  is  necessary.  The  first 
step  is,  of  course,  the  abolition  of  the  old-fashioned 
four-years  curriculum.  This  is  nothing  new,  for 
the  example  was  set  by  the  University  of  Virginia 
more  than  fifty  years  ago,  and  has  been  followed  by 
greater  and  greater  numbers  as  the  years  go  on. 
Of  course,  the  older  colleges  which  have  a  history 
hesitate,  and  compromise,  and  modify,  and  most  of 
them  have  managed,  after  a  fashion,  to  make  changes 
without  any  solution  of  the  historical  continuity. 
But  the  break  must  come,  however  tenaciously  the 
parts  may  be  held  together,  and  for  the  simple 
reason  that  life  is  not  long  enough  for  the  demands 

1  Written  in  1878. 


CLASSICS  AND   COLLEGES.  65 

of  the  college  as  now  constituted.  The  current 
boast  about  the  advance  of  the  standard  is  an  uncon 
scious  prediction  of  the  total  abandonment  of  the 
plan.  The  various  colleges  are  emulating  one 
another  as  to  conditions  for  entrance,  and  thus  doing 
their  best  to  advance  the  average  age  of  the  candi 
dates.  It  would  be  invidious  to  ask  how  far  the 
terms  of  admission  are  complied  with ;  how  large  a 
proportion  are  allowed  to  make  up  for  deficiencies 
at  their  leisure,  and  whether  the  passage  from  the 
lower  to  the  higher  class  is  everywhere  as  diligently 
guarded  as  the  entrance.  But,  invidious  or  not, 
that  is  not  the  immediate  question.  The  require 
ments  for  admission  are  so  high,  or,  as  Stuart  Mill 
would  probably  have  put  it,  the  preliminary  train 
ing  is  so  poor,  that  students  now  enter  college  at  an 
age  when  a  very  large  proportion  left  it,  twenty-five 
years  ago.  Even  in  the  last  twenty  years  the  aver 
age  age  of  the  students  at  entrance  has  advanced 
appreciably.  So  President  Eliot  says  in  his  annual 
report  for  1874-1875:  'The  average  age  of  the 
young  men  admitted  to  Harvard  has  been  gradually 
rising,  until  it  has  now  reached  a  limit  which  had 
better  not  be  exceeded.'  'The  average  age  has 
risen  six  months  in  twenty  years'  (from  1856  to 
1875).  '  The  average  age  for  the  last  five  years  has 
been  eighteen  years  and  five  months,  and  the  rise  of 
age  has  mainly  resulted  from  a  diminution  of  the 
proportional  number  of  those  who  enter  while  under 
seventeen  years  of  age  and  an  increase  in  the  propor 
tional  number  of  those  who  enter  at  from  eighteen. 
The  present  average  age  at  admission  is  high 
enough  to  secure  that  degree  of  maturity  and  of 


66  CLASSICS  AND   COLLEGES. 

capacity  for  self-control  which  it  is  desirable  that  a 
college  student  should  possess,  and  the  Faculty 
have  no  desire  to  see  it  rise  higher.'  Recent  events 
furnish  a  strange  commentary  on  the  first  clause 
of  the  last  paragraph ;  and  if  age  is  any  security 
for  self-control,  it  seems  as  if  it  would  be  necessary 
to  encourage  students  to  put  off  entering  college  a 
decennium  or  two  longer,  until  they  shall  have 
learned  wisdom  by  repeated  contact  with  police  courts 
during  their  preparation  for  college.1  It  is  the  firm 
belief  of  the  writer  that  the  recent  disorders,  which 
have  brought  so  much  disrepute  upon  American 
colleges  and  have  furnished  the  newspapers  of  the 
country  with  a  theme  thrice  welcome  to  the  national 
love  of  humorous  exaggeration,  are  due  in  good 
measure  to  the  fact  that  the  discipline  to  which 
boys,  after  boyish  resistance,  once  gracefully  suc 
cumbed,  is,  even  in  its  semblance,  an  intolerable 
nuisance  to  young  men.  But  to  return  to  the  report. 
'  The  increase  in  the  requisitions  for  admission  to 
college,  which  has  been  going  on  steadily  for  many 
years,  has  a  tendency  to  raise  the  age  of  admission  ; 
but  all  improvements  of  method  in  the  preparatory 
schools  tend  to  lower  it;  and  so  it  is  hoped  that 
the  age  will  not  mount  any  higher,  and  that  a 
young  man  will  have  some  five  years  for  professional 
study,  say  from  twenty-two  to  twenty-seven.'  Happy 
are  they  who  can  spend  so  long  a  time  in  prepara 
tion  ;  but  it  is  only  too  evident  that  this  scheme  has 
no  regard  for  the  exigencies  of  ordinary  life,  and 
must  either  limit  the  advantages  of  a  college  course 

*At  this  time  the  newspapers   were  filled  with  reports  of 
«  hazing  ',  '  cane-rushes  ',  and  college  riots  generally. — B.  L.  G. 


CLASSICS  AND   COLLEGES.  6? 

to  an  increasingly  smaller  proportion,  or  shorten 
the  period  of  special  preparation  for  a  profession. 
And  so  far  as  the  attitude  of  the  preparatory  schools 
is  concerned,  it  is  worth  inquiry  whether  they  are 
not  making  the  lowest  margin  of  entrance  into 
college  their  chief  end  ;  and  whereas  in  former  times 
many  of  the  schools  aspired  to  fit  a  boy  out  for  life, 
if  he  could  not  obtain  a  college  education,  the  great 
aim  is  now  to  land  the  candidates  safely  within  the 
pale  of  the  freshman  class.  Make  colleges,  if  you 
will,  of  the  preparatory  schools,  and  make  univer 
sities,  if  you  can,  of  the  colleges ;  but  do  not  keep 
up  the  continuity  of  schoolboy  work  far  into  man 
hood. 

Again,  it  does  seem  as  if  even  this  advanced 
standard,  of  which  so  much  is  made,  were  not  a 
superhuman  thing  after  all,  and  as  if,  with  the 
boasted  improvement  in  method,  a  boy  of  average 
sense  might  be  got  ready  for  the  best  of  our  colleges 
before  he  is  eighteen.  But  whether  that  be  so  or 
not,  if  he  enters  at  eighteen,  he  ought  not  to  be  kept 
at  college  work  until  he  is  twenty-two,  as  a  matter 
of  necessity.  The  curriculum  should  not  require 
four  years.  It  ought  to  be  something  that  could  be 
managed  in  two  or,  at  most,  three  by  a  student  of 
average  ability  and  application.  Every  one  ought 
to  be  at  man's  work  by  the  time  he  reaches  man's 
estate. 

President  Eliot  has  limited  the  range  of  inquiry 
to  the  twenty  years  prior  to  1875.  The  further 
back  you  go,  the  more  marked  the  difference,  as  an 
inspection  of  any  biographical  dictionary  will  show. 
The  men  of  the  first  half  of  the  century  left  college 


68  CLASSICS  AND   COLLEGES. 

at  an  age  when  many  enter  it  now.  So  Harvard 
sent  out  Everett  and  Bancroft  and  Motley  at  seven 
teen,  Lowell  at  twenty ;  Yale  graduated  Morse  and 
Woolsey  at  nineteen,  N.  P.  Willis  and  Porter  at 
twenty ;  Princeton  graduated  Dallas  and  Bishop 
Mcllvaine  at  eighteen.  Daniel  Webster  completed 
his  college  course  at  nineteen,  Chase  and  Choate  at 
twenty,  W.  D.  Whitney  at  eighteen  ;  and  examples 
may  be  multiplied  indefinitely.  Of  course,  the 
objection  will  be  raised  that  these  are  picked  men ; 
but  it  does  not  follow  because  they  are  picked  men 
that  they  were  precocious  men,  and  it  is  very  evident 
that  they  represent  the  average  age.  At  any  rate, 
their  success  shows  that  their  equipment  was  not  so 
wretchedly  insufficient  as  it  may  seem  to  those  who 
extol  the  present  advance  in  the  standard.  Instead 
of  learning  routine  lessons  at  twenty -two,  they  were 
busy  in  the  great  university  of  life. 

In  France  the  difficulty  seems  to  be  in  keeping 
the  age  of  the  baccalaureat  up,  so  that  even  a  re 
former  like  M.  Breal1  dares  not  insist  on  a  minimum 
age  of  eighteen  for  the  candidates,  and  France  may 
be  left  out  of  the  question.  Nor  need  we  consult 
English  statistics,  as  it  is  abundantly  evident  that 
despite  the  active  commercial  intercourse  between 
England  and  America,  Germany  has  more  weight 
with  us  in  matters  of  higher  education  than  England 
has.  Now  German  students  often  go  up  to  the 
university  at  the  age  indicated  by  President  Eliot  as 
the  average  age  of  the  Harvard  freshman ; 2  and 

1 '  Le  Baccalaureat   Allemand.'     Revue  des  Deux  Mondes, 
15  Nov.,  1873. 
8  Of  fifty-four  philologians  of  note  in  Freund's  Triennium, 


CLASSICS  AND    COLLEGES.  69 

though  the  age  may  have  advanced  there  also,  the 
advance  has  not  been  material,1  and  at  the  conclusion 
of  their  university  career  the  German  students  are 
little  older  than  the  average  of  American  students 
when  they  leave  college.  In  some  respects,  it  is 
true,  the  German  gymnasium  proper  does  not 
present  so  full  a  course  as  the  American  college,  as 
for  instance  in  mathematics  and  physics,  but  in  other 
departments  the  instruction  is  much  more  thorough, 
and  very  few  admirers  of  American  institutions  will 
contend  that  the  same  special  training  can  be  got  in 
the  same  time  by  the  American  and  the  German 
methods,  that  the  American  who  finishes  his  curri 
culum  at  twenty-two  is  as  far  on  his  way  in  the 
preparation  for  his  work  in  life  as  the  German  uni 
versity  student  of  the  same  age.  Indeed,  American 

i.  76,  thirty-eight  or  about  70  per  cent  entered  the  university 
at  seventeen  (12),  eighteen  (16)  and  nineteen  (10).  Six  entered 
at  sixteen,  only  six  at  twenty.  One,  Gottfried  Hermann,  was 
only  fourteen,  and  W.  Dindorf  only  fifteen,  and  there  were 
doubtless  special  reasons  in  the  cases  of  the  two  late  comers, 
one  at  twenty-one  and  the  other  at  twenty-two. 

1  A  writer  in  the  Revue  de  PEnseignement  Superieur  for 
1889,  in  view  of  the  usual  duration  of  the  time  of  study  (four 
years),  expresses  his  surprise  that  so  many  of  the  German 
students  enter  the  university  after  nineteen,  and  the  surprise 
is  natural  from  the  French  point  of  view.  But,  according  to 
American  standards,  that  age  is  not  high  for  the  entrance 
upon  professional  study;  in  fact,  it  is  early.  Statistics  show 
that  about  41  per  cent  of  the  students  in  the  Prussian  univer 
sities  during  1887  were  between  twenty  and  twenty-two,  and 
about  the  same  percentage  between  twenty-two  and  twenty- 
five,  from  which  it  is  clear  that  a  man  who  takes  his  Bachelor's 
degree  in  an  American  college  at  twenty-two  would  still, 
according  to  German  standards,  be  rather  late  in  beginning  a 
university  course. — B.  L.  G. 


yO  CLASSICS  AND   COLLEGES. 

students,  who  go  over  to  Germany  to  complete  their 
studies,  often  appear  as  tyipadels,  and  any  advantage 
they  may  have  over  their  German  compeers  is  not 
the  result  of  the  training  of  the  college,  but  the 
result  of  the  more  liberal  life  of  the  nation.  A  Ger 
man  student  as  he  issues  from  the  gymnasium  often 
seems  a  baby  as  compared  with  his  American  con 
temporary  when  he  enters  college,  but  measure  the 
two  according  to  attainments  towards  the  close  of 
their  college  or  their  university  life,  and  the  differ 
ence  will  not  be  in  favor  of  the  American.  The 
demand  for  early  specialization  is  a  dangerous 
heresy,  advocated  by  men  of  more  brilliancy  of 
style  than  solidity  of  judgment ;  and  the  importance 
of  a  broad  and  generous  foundation  for  professional 
study  must  be  insisted  on ;  but  there  is  no  valid 
defence  for  the  prolongation  of  what  is  essentially 
an  elementary  course  into  the  years  of  full  manhood. 

It  is  true  that  the  average  of  human  life  is  longer 
than  it  was  centuries  ago,  and  that  '  Old  John  of 
Gaunt,  time-honor'd  Lancaster ',  would  be  only  in 
his  prime  if  he  were  our  contemporary ;  but  life  is 
not  yet  long  enough  to  dawdle  away  the  early  years 
of  manhood  over  a  course  of  study  which  does  not 
bring  any  fresh  set  of  intellectual  muscles  into  play, 
and  does  not  convey  any  information  that  is  directly 
useful  for  the  future  career. 

Now  observe  the  consequence.  The  proportion 
of  college-bred  men  is  sensibly  lessening  in  the 
country,  and  that  not  to  the  advantage  of  society 
or  of  government.  Men  who  take  a  hard,  practical 
view  of  life  will  not  give  up  their  sons  from  eighteen 
to  twenty-two,  will  not  suffer  them  to  be  cut  off 


CLASSICS  AND   COLLEGES.  7 1 

from  all  the  valuable  connections  which  are  formed 
at  that  important  period ;  and  so  boys  who  might 
have  had  a  college  training  up  to  nineteen  or  twenty 
are  put  to  work  at  sixteen  or  seventeen,  and  the 
narrow-minded  fathers  are  blamed,  and  sermons  are 
preached  about  the  worship  of  mammon  and  the 
decline  of  culture.  The  old-fashioned  curriculum 
had  its  glaring  defects,  with  its  uniform  grind  for 
the  lower  classes  and  the  jumble  of  all  manner  of 
sciences  in  the  upper.  This  everybody  admits.  But 
it  was  the  college  life  after  all  that  was  the  main 
thing,  the  liberal  atmosphere,  the  contact  of  fervid 
minds,  the  putting  forth  of  untried  strength ;  and 
while  the  prescribed  college  course  was  a  small 
affair  to  an  active  mind,  it  actually  presented  points 
of  interest  and  incitement  enough  to  the  better  class 
of  students,  and  the  leisure  it  afforded  was  not  an 
unmixed  evil.  A  much  larger  proportion  of  a  man's 
general  reading  is  done  in  these  early  years  than  is 
commonly  supposed  ;  and  that  is  so  important  a  part 
of  an  education  that  a  course  of  study  that  exhausts 
the  student's  whole  time  is  far  from  desirable.  And 
this,  to  be  frank,  seems  to  be  the  great  trouble  with 
the  system  of  independent  '  schools '  in  those  col 
leges  which  follow  the  elective  system,  pure  and 
simple.  Each  professor,  naturally  sensitive  for  the 
honor  of  his  department,  claims  the  utmost  that  can 
be  exacted  of  his  students,  and  faithful  attention 
to  the  exercises  of  two  or  three  such  '  schools ' 
exhausts  the  power  of  the  student  for  mental  effort; 
and  the  result  is  a  lack  of  intellectual  mobility,  a 
certain  hard,  dry,  professional  habit  of  mind,  a  cer 
tain  attitude  which  makes  everything  appear  in  the 


72  CLASSICS  AND   COLLEGES. 

light  of  puzzle,  problem,  exercise.  Hence  the  old 
curriculum  was  not  so  bad  a  thing  for  the  boys  for 
whom  it  was  intended.  If  not  blessed  in  what  it 
did,  it  was  at  least  blessed  in  much  that  it  left 
undone.  If  it  did  not  make  scholars  of  the  highest 
type,  it  did  not  prevent  individual  expansion.  How 
is  it  with  the  new  curriculum,  which  is  followed  by 
so  many  grown-up  men  now  ?  It  is  certainly  much 
more  crowded  than  it  used  to  be,  and  the  variety  of 
subjects  taught,  great  enough  before,  is  bewildering 
now.  This  very  multiplicity,  however,  has  made 
some  plan  of  relief  necessary,  and  in  many  of  our 
colleges  a  part  of  the  studies  is  elective  and  a  certain 
bifurcation  takes  place,  in  some  after  the  freshman, 
in  some  after  the  sophomore  year,  in  others  accord 
ing  to  plans  of  marvellous  complication.  Does  not 
this  meet  the  wants  of  the  time  ?  Is  not  this  the 
true  way,  this  gradual  differentiation  and  specializa 
tion  ?  But  it  would  seem — and  this  must  be  said 
with  reserve — that  this  elective  work  is  conducted 
not  in  the  university,  but  in  the  college  spirit.  It  is 
after  all  essentially  a  hearing  of  lessons,  not  scientific 
study,  still  less  personal  research.  Reading  harder 
Greek,  harder  Latin,  does  not,  of  itself,  constitute 
university  work.  It  always  has  been,  and  always 
will  be,  a  question  when  hard  reading  is  to  be  taken 
up.  English  schoolboys  still  read,  and  American 
schoolboys  used  to  read,  such  authors  as  Aeschylus, 
Thucydides  and  Tacitus,  authors  that  men  like 
Friedrich  August  Wolf  and  August  Boeckh  main 
tained  should  be  reserved  for  the  university.  A 
few  specimens  might  be  given  in  the  gymnasium, 
says  Boeckh,  but  nothing  more.  For  the  proper 


CLASSICS  AND   COLLEGES.  73 

appreciation  of  such  authors  a  more  advanced  age, 
a  wider  knowledge  of  history,  is  necessary ;  and 
some  might  consider  it  a  positive  injury  to  under 
take  the  wrestling  with  these  intellectual  athletes 
before  the  muscles  are  sufficiently  strengthened. 
Still,  that  may  be  an  over-rigid  rule.  The  hardest 
authors  will  always  yield  some  benefit  to  the  younger 
student,1  while  the  easiest  will  always  offer  problems 
enough  to  the  most  mature : 

'Anders  lesen  Knaben  den  Terenz, 

Anders  Grotius  '; 
Mich,  Knaben,  argerte  die  Sentenz 

Die  ich  nun  gelten  lassen  muss.'  * 

It  is  not,  then,  a  question  of  harder  or  easier 
Latin  and  Greek  :  it  is  a  question  of  method.  It  is 
not  a  question  of  more  complicated  problems  in 
mathematics,  or  the  learning  of  more  recondite  laws 
of  physics.  It  is  a  question  of  method.  The  student 
should  be  taken  into  the  workshop  of  the  professor, 
should  see  him  work,  should  have  the  tools  put  into 
his  hand,  and  should  be  taught  to  use  them.  In 
most  of  our  higher  classes,  if  not  in  all,  the  mastery 

1  In  the  preface  to  his  school  edition  of  the  'Agamemnon  ', 
Enger  has  well  said  :  '  Wohl  wird  der  Schiller  nicht  Alles 
nach  seiner  tieferen  Bedeutung  zu  erfassen  im  Stande  sein, 
Vieles  wird  sich  seinem  Verstandnisse  ganz  entziehen,  Man- 
ches  wird  er  nur  ahnen  und  als  einen  spater  zu  hebenden 
Schatz  aufbewahren  :  allein  dies  wird  nicht  bios  bei  der  Lecture 
des  Aeschylos,  es  wird  bei  alien  alien  Klassikern  und  in  noch 
weit  hsherm  Grade  bei  den  neueren  der  Fall  sein.'  That  the 
modern  classics  are  really  harder  than  the  ancient,  and  that  the 
scientific  study  of  modern  languages  really  requires  a  far  more 
extensive  apparatus  than  that  of  the  ancient,  ought  to  be  no 
secret  to  any  one  who  has  thought  on  the  subject. 

8  Goethe,  Zahme  Xenien  IV. 


74  CLASSICS  AND    COLLEGES. 

of  the  text-book  is  the  main  thing,  and,  if  there  are 
lectures,  the  lectures  are  little  more  than  compila 
tions,  little  more  than  text-books  in  the  making,  or 
else  mere  popular  discourses,  with  most  of  the  dis 
advantages  and  few  of  the  elegances  of  the  French 
method,  which  von  Sybel  has  characterized  so  well 
in  his  memorable  discourse  on  the  German  univer 
sities  (2d  ed.,  Bonn,  1874),  a  method  which  Breal 
deplores  so  sincerely  in  his  book  entitled  'Quelques 
mots  sur  1'instruction  publique  en  France,  3e  ed., 
Paris,  1874.'  Breal  admits  that,  in  the  higher 
French  schools,  the  great  questions  of  history  and 
philology  are  set  forth  with  talent,  that  new  ideas 
are  at  once  taken  hold  of  and  elucidated ;  but  he 
remarks  with  justice  that  it  is  one  thing  to  propa 
gate  science,  another  to  teach  it,  and  says  boldly 
that  the  part  of  a  popularizer  (vulgarisateur),  useful 
in  itself,  is  not  that  which  is  proper  for  a  professor ; 
at  least,  it  is  only  half  of  his  task.  The  professor 
should  begin  the  investigation  over  again,  and 
repeat  the  work  of  the  originator  in  order  to  enable 
his  pupils  to  continue  the  discoveries  made  by  their 
seniors.  A  point  of  literary  history  cleared  up  by 
a  study  of  the  sources,  a  text  critically  studied,  an 
inscription  well  commented,  is  worth  much  more 
for  pupils  than  any  number  of  brilliant  lectures  on 
language,  literature,  the  discoveries  at  Mycenae  and 
Olympia,  or  the  latest  finds  in  Attica  and  Bceotia. 
True,  the  American  professor,  so  long  as  he  keeps 
within  the  walls  of  his  college,  is  not  exposed  to  the 
same  danger  of  consulting  the  tastes  of  his  audience 
and  of  catering  for  a  fastidious  public  from  year  to 
year,  as  is  his  French  colleague ;  but  the  same  false 


CLASSICS  AND    COLLEGES.  ?$ 

conception  of  the  academic  lecture  is  apt  to  prevail. 
The  courses  are  so  short  that  it  is  hard  to  do  more 
than  give  the  results  of  investigations;  there  is  no 
incitement  to  personal  research  on  the  part  of  the 
instructor,  and  so  the  lecture  falls  very  far  short  of 
being  the  powerful  instrument  it  might  be  for 
quickening  the  scientific  spirit  by  scientific  example. 
It  does  not  follow  by  any  means  from  what  is  said, 
that  popular  lectures,  popular  in  the  best  sense,  do 
not  serve  an  important  end.  The  masters  of  the 
various  departments  should,  from  time  to  time,  put 
themselves  into  sympathetic  communication  with 
the  people,  but  'popular  science', as  a  recent  journal 
has  well  remarked,  'is  commonly  taken  to  mean 
the  superficial  exposition  of  results  by  a  speaker  or 
writer,  who  himself  understands  them  imperfectly, 
to  the  intent  that  his  hearers  or  readers  may  be 
able  to  talk  about  them  without  understanding 
them  at  all.'  Popular  lectures  of  this  sort  ought  to 
have  no  place  in  the  universe,  much  less  in  the 
university;  and  no  lectures  however  'good'  they 
may  be,  can  have  a  quickening,  moulding  effect, 
unless  their  subject-matter  is  penetrated  by  the  liv 
ing,  plastic  forces  of  personal  research  and  personal 
communion  with  the  sources.  How  many  courses 
of  lectures  in  our  colleges  come  up  to  this  standard 
would  be  an  unpleasant  question  to  press.  And 
yet  without  such  lectures,  or  at  all  events  without 
exercises  of  some  sort  animated  by  this  spirit,  there 
can  be  no  university  life.  If  we  are  to  be  forever 
slavishly  dependent  on  Germany  for  results,  let  us 
acknowledge  it  frankly  and  make  no  further  claim 
to  anything  beyond  secondary  education ;  but  if  we 


76  CLASSICS  AND    COLLEGES. 

can  employ  scientific  methods,  where  are  we  to 
begin  the  discipline  if  not  in  our  colleges  and 
college-universities?  The  physicist  will  not  assert 
that  there  is  lack  of  material ;  the  comparative  ety 
mologist  has  a  wide  field  before  him,  with  only  a 
few  acres  tilled ;  the  student  of  English  has  no  end 
of  work  to  do ;  but  the  prospect  does  not  seem  so 
inviting  to  the  classical  philologian,  and  the  cry 
goes  up  that  the  Germans  have  occupied  all  the 
ground,  and  even  as  the  wail  ascends  some  German 
proves  that  yet  there  is  room,  by  doing  something 
of  moment  that  had  not  yet  been  thoroughly  done. 
The  problem  is  one  which  must  be  faced  by  every 
classical  scholar  who  has  the  perpetuity  of  his 
department  at  heart.  As  on  the  one  hand  the  clas 
sical  philologians  must  not  divorce  themselves  from 
general  culture,  so  on  the  other  they  must  see  to  it 
that  they  do  scientific  work  and  have  scientific  work 
done,  that  they  live  in  a  scientific  atmosphere.  Even 
as  an  educational  element  the  value  of  personal  re 
search  is  inestimable ;  and  no  one  who  has  seen  the 
rapid  unfolding  of  the  powers  of  the  mind  under 
the  quickening  influence  of  independent  work,  the 
firmer  grasp,  the  more  exact  knowledge,  the  more 
immediate  perception  of  the  objects  of  study,  could 
readily  consent  to  shut  up  these  expanding  faculties 
to  schoolboy  task-work.  And  schoolboy  task-work 
is  most  of  that  which  goes  under  the  name  of  ad 
vanced  courses.  But  still  the  question  will  recur : 
What  can  we  do  ?  How  can  we  find  material  for 
scientific  investigation  in  classical  philology,  such 
as  would  be  suitable  for  the  students  in  our  higher 
classes?  To  answer  such  a  question  may  seem 


CLASSICS  AND    COLLEGES.  ?/ 

presumptuous,  and  yet  some  answer  is  demanded  ; 
for  if  an  answer  be  not  given,  the  natural  inference 
will  be  that  the  asking  of  the  question  is  a  con 
fession  of  failure,  as  indeed  the  power  of  originat 
ing  lines  of  research  is  a  prime  requisite  for  the 
university  teacher.  It  is  true  that  the  classical 
philologian  in  this  country  is  much  hampered  by 
the  want  of  books,  as  there  is  not  a  library  in 
America  that  would  meet  the  requirements  of  a  wide 
research.  But  it  must  be  remembered  that  good 
work  has  been  done  elsewhere  with  resources  as 
scanty;  and  so  long  as  the  texts  of  the  ancient 
authors  themselves  are  accessible,  there  is  enough 
to  do  in  the  way  of  investigation  into  the  gram 
matical  and  rhetorical  usages  of  various  writers,  into 
the  historical  development  of  the  classic  languages, 
into  the  attitude  of  the  antique  mind  toward  the 
great  problems  of  politics,  of  religion,  of  art,  enough 
in  all  conscience  to  keep  us  busy.  All  these  are 
problems,  it  is  true,  which  have  occupied  the  atten 
tion  of  Transatlantic  scholars,  yet  they  are  all 
problems  the  solution  of  which  can  be  reached  by 
the  study  of  the  sources  themselves ;  and  the  very 
fact  that  we  are  in  a  measure  cut  off  from  the  tide 
of  treatises  with  which  Germany  is  flooded  is  a 
positive  advantage,'  if  it  only  sends  us  back  to  the 
fountain-head.  If  Americans  wish  to  accomplish 
anything  in  classical  philology,  they  must  perforce 
make  independent  studies  ;  and  the  training  for  this 
kind  of  work  should  begin  within  the  years  now 
ordinarily  occupied  by  college  lessons. 

But  while  we  insist  on  the  importance  of  an  intro 
duction  to  scientific  method  in  the  later  years  of 


78  CLASSICS  AND  COLLEGES. 

college  life,  or  as  we  should  prefer  to  have  it,  the 
first  years  of  university  life,  there  is  a  growing  ten 
dency  to  introduce  so-called  scientific  methods  into 
elementary  instruction,  of  which  something  should 
be  said  before  this  paper  is  closed.  In  a  treatise  on 
the  Homeric  Question  published  a  number  of  years 
ago,  Georg  Curtius  warned  young  teachers  against 
introducing  the  subject  into  their  class  instruction 
of  boys.  Such  warnings  are  always  needed.  A 
progressive  man  is  always  in  danger  of  being 
misled  by  his  own  interest  in  a  recent  discus 
sion  or  a  new  development;  and  every  one  who 
has  had  much  experience  in  lecturing  will  recog 
nize  the  great  difficulty  of  distributing  a  course 
properly,  owing  very  much  to  this  temptation  to 
expand  on  themes  which  are  of  immediate  per 
sonal  interest  to  the  lecturer.  This  disproportion 
may  not  do  so  much  harm  in  a  university  course, 
the  object  of  which  is  to  incite  rather 'than  to  in 
struct  ;  but  in  an  elementary  course  there  is  great 
danger  of  overlooking  the  real  object  to  be  had  in 
view.  Now,  there  does  not  seem  to  be  any  special 
peril  to  the  classics  from  over-abundance  of  literary 
speculation  on  the  part  of  our  teachers  of  junior 
classes.  There  are  few  American  instructors  who 
are  guilty  of  enveloping  their  pupils  with  the 
fog  of  the  Homeric  Question,  or  of  plunging  them 
into  the  ocean  of  debate  concerning  the  Platonic 
canon.  But  there  is  a  false  method  which  is  be 
coming  more  and  more  popular,  one  against  which 
it  is  dangerous  to  protest,  because  it  is  difficult  so 
to  guard  the  protest  that  it  will  not  Tbe  misunder 
stood.  Latin  and  Greek  are  to  be  studied  primarily 


CLASSICS  AND   COLLEGES.  79 

for  the  knowledge  of  the  life  of  the  Roman  and 
Greek  people  as  manifested  in  language  and  litera 
ture,  and  not  because  Latin  and  Greek  are  con 
venient  vehicles  for  the  communication  of  a  certain 
amount  of  linguistic  philosophy  or  comparative 
grammar.  Such  matters  are  entirely  out  of  place  in 
the  early  stages  of  study.  The  beginner  has  to  do 
with  results  chiefly,  not  processes ;  and  while  these 
results  must  not  be  taught  in  an  inorganic  way, 
while  no  known  falsehood  must  be  tolerated  because 
of  its  supposed  practical  advantages,  while  regard 
must  be  had  to  the  mental  training  to  be  acquired 
by  the  study  of  the  grammar  of  the  ancient  lan 
guages,  as  well  as  to  the  more  subtle  education  of 
the  taste,  it  is  a  capital  mistake  to  introduce  a  stu 
dent  into  the  maze  of  hypotheses  in  which  the 
formation  of  a  language  is  involved  before  he  has 
any  practical  acquaintance  with  the  language  itself, 
before  he  has  any  insight  into  the  literature  for  the 
sake  of  which  chiefly  the  language  is  to  be  learned. 
Let  comparative  grammar  come  in  due  time.  There 
is  no  nobler  study ;  and  although  its  ample  domain 
gives  large  scope  to  pretenders  and  sciolists  of  every 
degree,  no  classical  philologian  will  now  sneer  at 
its  methods  and  disregard  its  results.  It  is  only 
through  the  comparative  study  of  language  that  we 
can  get  any  answer  to  some  of  the  most  urgent 
problems  of  classical  study,  and  although  it  is  some 
what  disheartening  to  find  the  great '  world-circum 
navigator  of  languages ',  Pott,  so  wofully  deficient 
in  English  as  to  construct  the  following  sentence : 
'  I  will  be  drunk ;  no  shall  me  help ',  in  the  fond 
belief  that  it  meant,  '  I  will  be  drowned,  nobody 


8O  CLASSICS  AND   COLLEGES. 

shall  help  me  ',  still  we  are  not  to  be  deterred  by  the 
blunders  of  polyglots  from  paying  our  homage  to 
the  genius  and  learning  and  thoroughness  of  many 
illustrious  workers  in  this  department. 

But  this  is  not  a  question  of  the  value  of  the 
study,  the  value  of  the  results,  the  position  of  the 
masters  of  the  science.  It  is  a  question  of  time  and 
stage.  An  attempt  tp  study  one  of  the  classic  lan 
guages  scientifically,  as  it  is  called,  from  the  outset 
must  lead  to  one  of  two  results  :  either  the  unhesi 
tating  acceptance  as  proved  facts  of  a  number  of 
provisional  hypotheses,  or  the  despairing  see-saw 
between  conflicting  views,  which  the  novice  has 
neither  the  knowledge  nor  the  experience  to  con 
trol  ;  and  it  is  hard  to  tell  which  of  these  is  the 
worse  for  the  development  of  the  young  student. 
In  a  science  which  is  making  such  rapid  progress, 
or  rather  which  shifts  its  ground  so  rapidly  as  com 
parative  etymology  does,  it  is  very  dangerous  to  lay 
down  a  rule ;  and  it  is  enough  to  call  a  smile  to  the 
face  of  the  most  saturnine  to  see  the  favorite  super 
scription,  '  Based  on  the  certain  results  of  compar 
ative  philology.'  No  sooner  is  a  great  point  gained 
than  it  is  at  once  turned  to  practical  account,  and  the 
new  theory  is  clapped  into  the  grammar  before  it 
has  had  time  to  cool,  which  generally  means  time 
to  shrink.  There  are  results  as  certain  as  anything 
can  well  be ;  although,  when  we  find  that  it  has 
been  the  fashion  in  certain  quarters  to  attack  such 
a  pillar  and  ground  of  the  truth  as  Grimm's  Law, 
the  question  naturally  arises  :  What  is  really  safe  ? 
what  can  we  state  with  absolute  confidence  ?  It  is 
simply  amusing  to  see  the  changes  that  take  place 


CLASSICS  AND    COLLEGES.  8 1 

within  a  very  few  years  in  the  theory  of  forms,  in 
the  theory  of  phonetics.  First  the  reflexive  form 
ation  of  the  Greek  middle  is  announced  as  a  cer 
tainty  ;  then,  after  that  has  been  acquiesced  in  for 
a  while,  the  ingenious  suggestion  is  made  that  the 
middle  is  after  all  not  a  reflexive,  and  its  termina 
tions  only  indicate  a  peculiar  differentiation  from 
the  active ;  then  the  originator  of  this  theory  takes 
it  all  back  and  gives  an  improved  edition  of  the  first 
theory ;  and  finally  a  sober  judge,  after  a  careful 
survey  of  the  ground,  says  that  the  theory  is  not 
proved.  Look  at  the  theory  of  the  connecting 
vowel.  It  is  a  convenient  expression,  an  appar 
ently  innocent  expression ;  and-  yet  many  a  man 
has  been  tempted  to  wish  that  he  had  never  been 
born  by  reason  of  the  connecting  vowel.  Is  it 
merely  phonetic?  Is  it  originally  significant? 
Vicarious  protraction — that  is  a  fine  phrase !  Vi 
carious  protraction  or  compensative  lengthening 
explains  so  many  things.  Length  by  nature  takes 
the  place  of  length  by  position.  It  is  a  beautiful 
principle,  this  satisfaction  made  for  lost  consonants  ; 
it  leads  to  profound  moral  reflections,  and  is  applied 
with  great  zeal  and  zest — where  it  does  not  belong. 
So  the  old-fashioned  explanation  that  8l8ov  is  for 
8i8o€f  as  &?Xou  for  S^Xoe,  is  discarded,  and  we  are 
taught  that  didov  is  for  didodi,  the  lost  syllable  61 
having  been  paid  for  by  the  lengthening  of  o  into 
ou.  A  few  years  pass  by.  Teachers  and  scholars 
alike  repeat  this  beautiful  explanation,  until  it  is 
observed  that  unless  the  deceased  consonants  have 
a  certain  amount  of  property,  no  damages  will  be 
paid,  and  dead  syllables,  as  such,  bequeath  no 


82  CLASSICS  AND    COLLEGES. 

claims ;  and  so  the  old  *  unscientific '  explanation 
of  8i8ov  comes  back,  but  the  correction  halts  far 
behind  the  mistake.  Comparative  syntax  is  the 
latest  born  daughter  of  the  new  science,  and  not 
the  least  attractive ;  but  she  is  too  young  to  know 
her  own  mind  on  some  of  the  most  important 
points,  and  the  utterance  of  to-day  may  be  revoked 
to-morrow.  In  short,  all  this  is  university  work, 
the  essence  of  which  is  progress  from  hypothesis 
to  hypothesis,  but  it  ought  to  have  no  place  in 
preliminary  instruction.  There  is  a  tendency, 
healthy  in  the  main,  to  reduce  the  amount  of  ratio 
cination  in  our  grammars,  to  temper  the  severe 
'metaphysics  of  the  subjunctive  mood',  as  it  has 
been  called.  May  it  not  be  time  to  watch  the 
encroachments  of  speculation  on  the  exhibition  of 
the  forms  and  their  consequent  use,  and  to  see  that 
we  do  not  commit  ourselves  in  one  year  to  an  orig 
inal  locative  signification  for  the  infinitive,  which  we 
shall  a  year  or  two  after  sadly  retract  in  favor  of 
the  dative,  to  be  followed  perhaps  in  a  few  months 
by  a  judicious  compromise  between  dative  and 
locative  ?  Nor  would  it  be  amiss  to  ask  whether 
the  subject  of  phonetics  does  not  need  watching. 
The  proportions  which  the  department  has  assumed 
are  appalling  even  to  some  professed  philologians, 
who  find  themselves  in  danger  of  being  disbarred 
by  those  who  consider  it  the  chief  end  of  a  student 
of  language  to  make  himself  master  of  the  physical 
side  of  speech.  All  this  belongs  to  the  univer 
sity  course,  not  to  the  college  course  proper,  and 
the  mischievous  effects  of  anticipating  these  studies 
are  showing  themselves  more  and  more.  Vocab- 


CLASSICS  AND    COLLEGES.  83 

ulary  is  sacrificed  to  etymology,  the  knowledge  of 
the  actual  forms  to  the  theoretical  genesis  of  the 
inflections,  and  time  which  might  be  spent  in  gain 
ing  a  nearer  acquaintance  with  the  masterpieces  of 
antique  literature  is  occupied  with  the  deglutition 
of  the  last  ragotits  of  language-cookery ;  and  the 
less  the  mastery  of  the  subject  on  the  part  of  the 
teacher  or  writer,  the  greater  seems  to  be  the  desire 
to  make  the  treatment '  scientific ' ;  and  so  in  the 
plastic  age  of  study  the  golden  opportunity  of 
appropriating  the  peculiar  value  of  the  classic  lan 
guages  is  thrown  away  for  the  sake  of  imparting 
the  elements  of  a  science  which  cannot  be  taught  as 
a  science  without  going  back  at  least  as  far  as  the 
Indo-European  basis  of  our  family. 

It  does  not  mend  the  matter  at  all  to  plead  that 
the  same  tendencies  are  to  be  noticed  in  the  Ger 
man  gymnasia;  that  the  actual  reading  of  the  classic 
authors  is  there  also  made  of  too  little  account  in 
the  course  of  study ;  that  there  as  here  the  ancients 
are  used  more  as  vehicles  for  intellectual  exercise 
than  as  food  for  mind  and  heart.  It  is  not  the  object 
of  the  writer  of  this  paper  to  hold  up  the  German 
gymnasia  as  faultless  models,  nor  yet  to  advocate 
the  unconditional  imitation  of  German  universities. 
Certainly,  when  thoughtful  German  scholars  like 
von  Sybel,  and  experienced  teachers  like  Peter, 
warn  their  own  countrymen  against  the  false 
methods  that  are  prevalent  there,  it  were  well  for  us 
to  pause  before  adopting  every  new  device  in  teach 
ing  that  is  sanctioned  by  German  authority. 

How  far  the  methods  of  the  German  university 
are  applicable  to  our  educational  life  is  a  question 


84  CLASSICS  AND    COLLEGES. 

which  it  is  too  late  to  open  at  the  close  of  an  article 
already  too  long ;  and  it  is  possible  that  further  sug 
gestion  may  be  as  unwelcome  as  further  fault-find 
ing  is  sure  to  be.  In  brief,  what  we  want  is  more 
thorough  conviction  on  the  part  of  our  teachers  of 
Greek  and  Latin,  better  drill  and  less  science  in  the 
elementary  classes,  a  wider  range  of  reading  for 
literary  purposes,  a  separation  of  university  work 
and  college  work  in  the  last  years  of  student  life, 
and  a  resolute  purpose  to  make  an  honorable  posi 
tion  for  the  American  people  in  this  department  of 
thought  and  culture  as  in  others. 


UNIVERSITY  WORK  IN  AMERICA 

AND 

CLASSICAL  PHILOLOGY 


UNIVERSITY  WORK  IN  AMERICA  AND 
CLASSICAL  PHILOLOGY. 

An  attempt  to  define  university  work  would  in 
evitably  end  in  so  protracted  a  discussion  of  the 
idea  of  the  university  itself,  that  little  room  would 
be  left  for  the  proper  theme  of  this  paper.1  The 
term  is  undoubtedly  vague.  In  England  it  has  a 
different  meaning  from  what  it  has  in  Germany; 
and  in  this  country,  although  the  ideal  to  which  we 
are  tending  is  rather  German  than  English,  the  tra 
ditions  of  our  older  institutions  of  learning  and  the 
circumstances  of  our  nationality  necessarily  modify 
the  conception  of  university  work.  If  we  consider 
it  to  be  the  crowning  exercise  of  an  educational 
system,  then  we  are  confronted  by  the  question, 
Does  university  work  differ  from  college  work  in 
kind  or  in  degree,  or  in  both  ?  This  question  also 
cannot  be  answered  categorically.  In  Oxford  and 
Cambridge,  where  the  colleges  constitute  the  uni 
versity,  it  cannot  be  answered  at  all ;  nor  are  we 
aided  in  the  solution  of  the  problem  by  those 
Boards  of  Examiners  which  assume  the  name  of 
universities,  while  discharging  only  one  function  of 
a  university.  In  Germany,  if  we  consider  the 

'This  essay,  published  in  the  Princeton  Review  for  May, 
1879,  is  the  expansion  of  my  presidential  address  to  the 
American  Philological  Association  at  their  Saratoga  meeting, 
July  n,  1878. 


88  UNIVERSITY    WORK  IN  AMERICA. 

gymnasium  as  corresponding  in  some  general  way 
to  our  college,  the  answer  will  vary  according  to 
the  department.  In  some  directions  the  gymna 
sium  overlaps  what  we  should  consider  university 
work ;  in  others  it  leaves  too  much  to  the  univer 
sity  teacher.  Indeed,  complaints  are  rife  enough 
in  Germany  that  students  come  up  to  the  university 
unprepared  for  scientific  work  in  the  classics ;  and 
the  older  the  teachers  are,  the  further  back  do  they 
push  the  golden  age  when  young  men  were  fully 
acquainted  with  all  the  technicalities  of  Latin  and 
Greek  grammar  before  they  entered  the  sacred  pre 
cincts  of  the  university.  The  professors  of  my 
student  days  used  to  hold  up  their  hands  over 
eccentric  formations  and  erratic  accents  and  declare 
that  it  was  far  otherwise  when  their  Plancus  was 
consul,  and  the  same  doleful  strain  runs  through  the 
records  of  each  preceding  generation.  But  after 
making  large  deductions  in  view  of  this  well-known 
tendency  toward  the  exaltation  of  the  past,  there 
must  be  some  ground  for  the  complaint ;  and, 
at  any  rate,  when  we  look  so  much  to  German 
models,  it  is  the  part  of  wisdom  to  guard  against 
the  evils  which  our  leaders  themselves  deplore.  It 
is  true  that  there,  as  here,  the  voices  of  the  reformers 
are  not  in  unison :  that  some  complain  of  the  mass 
of  subjects  which  must  be  got  up  for  the  examina 
tions  and  so  preclude  the  possibility  of  special 
research,  while  others  maintain  that  early  special 
ization  is  the  bane  of  the  intellectual  life  of  the  Ger 
man  student  of  to-day,  and  that  in  consequence  of 
a  narrowing  range  of  vision  everything  is  becoming 
hopelessly  microscopic  and  hopelessly  dry.  But, 


UNIVERSITY    WORK  IN  AMERICA.  89 

in  spite  of  this  difference  of  opinion,  it  is  not  hard 
to  see  that  the  danger  for  any  university  life  that  we 
may  have  or  may  initiate  will  come  rather  from  the 
tendency  to  specialization  than  from  the  attempt  to 
take  in  too  large  an  area  of  study,  because  that 
university  life  will  be  moulded  mainly  by  young 
specialists,  bred  in  the  schools  of  Germany,  who 
will  very  naturally  measure  the  importance  of 
everything  by  the  standard  of  their  own  early  suc 
cess.  The  upshot  will  be  that  the  crowded  curric 
ulum  of  the  college  will  be  followed  by  university 
courses  in  which  detailed  study  and  minute  inves 
tigation  will  not  leave  time  for  a  general  view  of 
any  one  great  department  of  science  or  literature. 
In  short,  we  shall  have  the  specialist  part  of  a  Ger 
man  university  based  on  the  conglomerate  of  an 
American  college.  Such  an  incongruous  structure 
can  hardly  be  regarded  with  complacency  as  the 
best  outcome  of  the  arduous  work  of  American 
teachers.  University  as  well  as  college  should 
be  American,  meet  the  needs  of  our  civilization, 
and  bear  the  stamp  of  our  national  character.  In 
the  preceding  paper  I  have  stated  my  conviction 
that  a  great  deal  would  be  gained  by  frankly 
recognizing  the  necessity  that  the  work  now  done 
by  the  colleges  should  be  redistributed.  That  ac 
complished,  and  our  secondary  schools  brought  up 
to  a  higher  state  of  efficiency,  we  should  have  the 
elements  for  the  solution  of  the  problem  of  univer 
sity  work  in  America ;  and  in  the  faith  that  these 
reforms  will  yet  be  wrought,  I  venture  to  antici 
pate  that  future  and  face  a  question,  on  the 
answer  to  which  our  higher  intellectual  life  is 


9O  UNIVERSITY    WORK  IN  AMERICA. 

suspended.  For,  as  nearly  all  the  learned  activity 
of  Germany  proceeds  from  the  universities,  to  which 
the  French  themselves  attribute  their  defeat  in  the 
late  struggle,  so  in  this  country,  owing  to  the 
absence  of  any  large  class  of  men  who  enjoy  at 
once  cultivation  and  inherited  wealth,  the  scientific 
work  of  the  country  must  come  mainly  from  those 
who  are  teachers,  and  who  have  to  teach  for  the 
means  of  subsistence.  In  England  a  considerable 
portion  of  the  best  work  that  is  done  has  no  aca 
demic  character,  and  it  is  not  to  be  denied  that  the 
advantage  is  not  wholly  on  the  side  of  the  German. 
The  Englishman  breathes  a  freer  air  and  brings  to 
his  work  a  fresher  realism  than  is  possible  for 
most  German  professors,  whose  wide  reading  and 
quick  sympathy  cannot  counteract  the  peculiar 
limitations  of  their  existence — limitations,  however, 
which  are  rapidly  falling  away  in  the  new  political 
life  of  the  German  people.  The  American  pro 
fessor,  then,  like  the  German,  is  not  only  the 
teacher  of  his  class  but  the  teacher  of  his  nation ; 
and  we  must  look  to  our  universities  and  colleges 
for  the  bulk  of  our  scientific  work — mathematical, 
physical,  historical,  and  linguistic.  How  to  pro 
mote  that  work,  how  to  make  our  highest  educa 
tional  institutions  most  effective  for  at  once  ad 
vancing  the  empire  of  knowledge  and  training  the 
future  leaders  of  American  thought,  is  a  question 
of  the  gravest  importance ;  and  while  no  one  man 
can  hope  to  master  the  problem  in  all  its  bearings, 
every  observant  teacher,  every  scholar  on  whom 
rests  the  spirit  of  his  vocation,  can  aid  in  the  prac 
tical  solution,  if  it  be  but  by  a  single  suggestion  or 
by  an  earnest  aspiration. 


UNIVERSITY    WORK  IN  AMERICA.  9 1 

As  was  intimated  in  the  beginning  of  this  paper, 
no  attempt  will  be  made  to  mark  off  sharply  the 
boundaries  between  university  work  and  college 
work.  There  is  much  ground  that  is  necessarily 
common  to  both,  whatever  theoretical  difference 
you  may  make.  The  material,  to  a  considerable 
extent,  is  the  same,  and  in  certain  departments  the 
method  must  be  the  same.  The  student  of  a  Ger 
man  university,  if  we  take  that  as  our  type,  has  to 
traverse  many  of  the  authors  whom  he  toiled  over 
in  the  gymnasium ;  and  the  university  student,  if 
he  is  to  succeed,  must  be  content  to  say  his  San 
skrit  paradigms  at  twenty-one  as  meekly  as  he  said 
his  Latin  paradigms  at  ten.  Still  the  university 
differs,  or,  let  us  say,  ought  to  differ,  from  the  col 
lege,  inasmuch  as  it  should  be  a  great  laboratory  of 
systematic  research.  On  the  other  hand,  it  differs 
from  an  academy  of  sciences,  inasmuch  as  it  should 
be  a  great  centre  of  instruction.  To  the  combina 
tion  and  interaction  of  research  and  training,  the 
German  universities  owe  their  efficiency  and  their 
influence ;  and  whatever  modification  German  meth 
ods  must  undergo  before  they  can  be  made  fruitful 
in  our  civilization,  these  two  elements  must  always 
be  associated  in  our  highest  work.  True,  an  able 
explorer  may  be  an  indifferent  teacher ;  a  good 
teacher  may  not  have  the  spirit  of  initiative  which 
leads  to  successful  investigation  ;  but  the  two  fac 
ulties,  though  not  always  in  perfect  balance,  are 
seldom  wholly  divorced,  and  a  university  professor 
should  possess  both.  Much  of  the  wrong-headed- 
ness  of  unacademic  scholars,  wrong-headedness 
that  seriously  impairs  the  scientific  value  of  their 


Q2  UNIVERSITY    WORK  IN  AMERICA. 

results,  comes  from  the  want  of  contact  with  other 
minds ;  and  the  teacher  who  is  forced  by  the  exi 
gencies  of  instruction  to  formulate  his  views  may, 
indeed,  be  exposed  to  the  great  peril  of  premature 
dogmatism ;  but  if  he  is  an  honest  man,  he  is  com 
pelled  to  grapple  with  problems  which  he  might 
otherwise  have  left  in  abeyance ;  if  he  is  a  sympa 
thetic  man,  there  is  a  woe  upon  him  unless  he  con 
quer  his  hearer's  conviction ;  if  he  is  an  observant 
man,  he  will  not  fail  to  see  new  avenues  of  thought 
opening  through  the  perplexities  of  his  scholars. 
We  often  read  of  the  solitary  thinker's  long  strug 
gles  in  the  dark  with  some  great  question,  from 
which  the  blessing  of  an  answer  is  at  last  extorted, 
but  we  do  not  always  know  the  full  history  of  the 
problem,  nor  what  pupil's  keen  objection  or  curious 
inquiry  first  evoked  the  contest.  To  the  investi 
gator,  then,  the  teacher's  function  is  not,  certainly 
need  not  be,  a  mere  clog  on  his  work  of  personal 
research.  Nor  should  the  man  who  is  conscious  of 
an  especial  aptitude  for  teaching  be  content  with 
the  orderly  arrangement  and  the  systematic  com 
munication  of  other  people's  results.  He  must  not 
only  judge  for  himself,  he  must  work  for  himself; 
and  while  special  research  has,  it  is  true,  the  draw 
back  that  it  tends  to  make  the  course  of  instruction 
less  symmetrical,  what  is  lost  in  the  rounded  com 
pleteness  of  form  is  more  than  made  up  by  the 
kindling  life  that  goes  forth  from  every  one  who  is 
engaged  in  the  ardent  quest  of  truth ;  and  so  thor 
oughly  correlated  is  all  knowledge,  that  there  are 
subtle  lines  of  connection  between  the  most  remote 
regions  of  scientific  study  which  vitalize  theme  and 


UNIVERSITY    WORK  IN  AMERICA.  93 

method  through  the  whole  intervening  space.  This 
thesis  is  far  from  being  new,  but  it  is  susceptible  of 
ever  new  and  ever  fresh  illustration,  and  the  career 
of  any  of  the  great  men  who  have  been  at  once  great 
investigators  and  great  teachers  would  be  a  profit 
able  study  for  those  who  wish  to  make  their  aca 
demic  life  something  worthier  than  a  perfunctory 
discharge  of  mechanical  duties.  On  the  selfish  and 
the  indolent  such  lessons  would  be  wasted. 

But,  not  to  incur  the  charge  of  mere  declamation 
about  ideals,  which  may  be  tolerated  only  in  a  holi 
day  address,  let  us  ask  ourselves  what  can  be  done 
here  in  America  for  the  furtherance  of  a  higher 
standard  of  work  both  in  research  and  teaching; 
and  this  inquiry  I  desire  to  bring  within  the  range 
of  those  studies  with  which  I  am  personally  most 
familiar.  And  yet  I  am  not  without  hope  that  what 
I  shall  have  to  say  of  the  subject  of  research  and 
teaching  in  classical  philology  may  have  a  wider 
application,  and  so  be  not  unwelcome  to  those  who 
believe  with  me  that  it  is  not  in  vain  that  the  Amer 
ican  student  has  been  endowed  with  that '  singular 
buoyancy  and  elasticity '  which,  according  to  Dean 
Stanley,  is  the  marked  peculiarity  of  our  people ; 
not  in  vain  our  unequalled  adaptability,  our  quick 
perception,  our  straightforwardness  of  intellectual 
motion.1  We  have  the  defects  of  our  good  qual 
ities,  no  doubt ;  but  those  defects  do  not  preclude 
the  possibility  of  scholarly  work  of  a  high  order. 

It  must  be  confessed,  however,  that  the  outlook 
for  the  classical  philologian  is  not  encouraging. 

1  Even  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold  conceded  this.  We  Americans 
'  think  straight  and  see  clear  '. — B.  L.  G. 


94  UNIVERSITY   WORK  IN  AMERICA. 

Let  us  imagine  a  young  man  fresh  from  the  best 
German  schools.  Such  a  supposition  would  have 
been  construed  as  a  personal  allusion  twenty-five 
years  ago ;  it  is  hardly  more  definite  now  than  to 
suppose  a  graduate  of  Harvard  or  of  Yale.  Our 
young  friend  begins  his  novitiate  either  as  a  tutor 
in  one  of  our  large  universities,  or  as  a  professor  in 
some  half-endowed  college.  The  transition  is  one 
of  the  most  painful  that  can  be  imagined.  Even 
the  return  of  the  mythical  good  American  from  the 
Elysian  fields  of  Paris  could  be  scarcely  less  dis 
tressing  than  the  descent  of  the  enthusiastic  student 
from  the  academic  heights  of  German  university  life 
to  the  unromantic  levels  of  the  American  class 
room.  If  our  hero  had  spent  a  semester  or  more 
at  a  minor  university,  or  followed  the  exercises  of 
a  gymnasium  for  a  few  months,  the  feeling  of  exal 
tation  might  have  worn  off  and  the  fall  might 
have  been  broken.  But  he  comes  from  the  best 
in  quality  and  the  richest  in  resource  to  our  average. 
In  the  meagrely  furnished  library  he  misses  his 
favorite  books,  or  rather  books  which  by  frequent 
citation  he  seems  to  know ;  in  the  reading-room  he 
cannot  find  the  journals  so  familiar  to  eye  and  ear. 
He  has  no  one  who  will  suffer  him  to  talk  about 
the  themes  of  his  personal  research  or  even  the 
absorbing  topic  of  his  doctor-dissertation,  because 
there  is  no  one  who  has  a  like  attention  to  exact 
of  him  in  turn.  His  duties  are  eminently  dis 
tasteful.  Instead  of  following  the  history  of  a  con 
struction,  chasing  an  etymon  through  a  score  of 
languages,  getting  at  the  sources  of  an  historian, 
analysing  the  style  of  an  orator,  he  has  to  listen  to 


UNIVERSITY    WORK  IN   AMERICA.  95 

translations  of  Xenophon's  Anabasis,  to  correct 
exercises  in  which  Darius  and  Parysatis  continue  to 
have  two  sons  in  all  the  moods  and  tenses,  and, 
what  is  worst  of  all,  he  is  often  waked  up  out  of  his 
learned  dreams  to  find  that  the  irregular  Greek 
verbs,  which  he  once  fancied  he  knew  well  enough, 
are  to  be  an  object  of  steady  contemplation  for  the 
rest  of  his  natural  life,  and  that  with  all  his  gettings 
he  has  still  no  end  of  work  to  do  in  the  mechanical 
mastery,  so  to  speak,  of  the  language  to  which  he 
has  devoted  himself.  The  situation  is  grim,  and 
there  is  little  help  from  without.  Sometimes  he  is 
utterly  alone.  Sometimes  the  traditions  of  the  col 
lege  or  university  do  not  favor  easy  intercourse 
between  the  principal  and  the  subordinate  teachers. 
But  even  when  the  older  colleague  is  accessible  and 
has  gone  through  the  same  experience,  even  when 
counsel  and  sympathy  are  not  far  to  seek,  still  men 
of  the  younger  generation  being  naturally  prone 
to  consider  their  case  one  of  especial  hardship, 
prefer  to  nurse  their  own  bitterness  ;  and  after  a  few 
years  of  repining  at  the  situation,  a  few  years  of 
sneering  at  the  possibility  of  American  scholarship, 
they  go  the  way  of  all  the  rest,  edit  some  over- 
edited  school  classic,  translate  some  convenient 
manual,  get  up  a  text-book  of  some  sort,  and  in  the 
lapse  of  time  look  with  half-pitying,  half-envious 
eyes  on  the  lads  who  come  back  from  their  studies 
abroad  conscious,  as  their  elders  were  once,  of  a 
special  divinity  within  them.  And  this  is  the  history 
of  many  of  our  best  men — not  all  their  history,  for 
it  were  not  only  foolish  but  criminal  to  measure  a 
professor's  efficiency  simply  by  his  written  work. 
There  is  often  a  sublime  self-denial  in  the  resolute 


g  UNIVERSITY    WORK  IN  AMERICA. 

concentration  of  a  teacher  on  the  business  of  the 
class-room;  and  the  noiseless  scholarship  that 
leavens  generation  after  generation  of  pupils  is  of 
more  value  to  the  world  of  letters  than  folios  of  pre 
tentious  erudition.  It  was  with  profound  insight 
that  the  Greeks  called  higher  study  by  the  same 
name  as  personal  intercourse.  To  the  Greek, 
university  students  were  of  o-wovres ;  and  he  who  has 
made  faithful  use  of  this  power  of  personal  influence 
shall  have  his  reward,  even  if  he  has  nothing  to  show 
in  black  and  white.  Still,  if  individual  research  is, 
as  we  have  seen,  a  necessary  element  of  university 
work,  it  should  not  be  confined  to  the  four  walls  of 
lecture-room  or  laboratory  ;  it  must  find  expression 
where  it  can  encounter  criticism,  where  its  results 
can  be  corrected,  if  they  need  correction,  where  its 
method  can  direct  and  its  life  inspire  others,  to  say 
nothing  of  that  recognition  which  every  true  scholar 
craves  from  true  scholars.  It  is  sad  to  think  that  so 
plain  a  text  should  still  need  a  preacher,  but  it  will 
not  need  a  preacher  long.  Even  at  the  slow  rate 
at  which  our  philological  life  is  accumulating, 
closer  contact,  and  hence  quickened  activity,  is  inevi 
table.  Every  year  the  ranks  of  American  philolo- 
gians  receive  accessions  of  ambitious  young  men, 
and  the  chief  care  must  be  to  keep  their  zeal  alive. 
To  this  end  the  existing  organizations  are  not  suf 
ficient.  The  American  Philological  Association — 
a  comparatively  recent  institution — and  its  elder 
sister,  the  American  Oriental  Society,  are  praise 
worthy  expressions  of  the  desire  for  a  better  state  of 
things  ;  but  everybody  knows  that  these  companies 
of  scholars  depend  for  their  existence  on  the  per 
sonal  influence  and  reputation  of  a  few  distin- 


UNIVERSITY   WORK  IN  AMERICA.  97 

guished  men,  and  the  meetings  are  too  infrequent, 
the  attendance  too  meagre,  and  the  elements  too 
varying  to  encourage  the  hope  that  the  redemption 
of  philology  for  which  we  pray  is  to  come  from 
them.  Even  in  Germany,  with  its  hosts  of  scholars 
and  its  narrower  territory,  the  annual  conventions 
of  philologians  do  not  seem  to  be  so  successful  as 
they  were  in  time  past ;  and  what  if  Germany  de 
pended  on  those  meetings  for  the  inspiration  of  an 
entire  year  ?  Indeed  the  question  seems  rather  to 
be  how  to  infuse  vitality  into  our  yearly  meetings, 
and  thus  preserve  these  organizations  for  better 
times,  than  how  to  quicken  through  them  the  life  of 
American  philology.  Both  these  associations  to 
which  I  have  referred  would  be  roused  to  higher 
activity  if  there  were  similar  centres  of  work  all 
over  the  country,  Wherever  there  is  a  college  or 
university  the  professors  and  the  advanced  stu 
dents — of  whom  a  handful  might  always  be  found — 
should  unite,  not  in  a  club  for  reading  little  essays 
and  for  miscellaneous  talk,  but  for  some  kind  of 
work,  work  in  which  all  should  participate.  In 
these  minor  associations  lines  of  research  would  be 
opened,  material  accumulated,  crudities  worked  off, 
and  papers  prepared  for  publication.  It  is  an  open 
question  how  far  such  associations  should  be  made 
a  part  of  the  official  duties  of  professors  and  stu 
dents,  because  the  official  tends  to  the  perfunctory ; 
but  they  should  have  a  place  made  for  them  in  the 
organic  plan  of  the  institution.1  These  gatherings, 

1  The  hundredth  meeting  of  the  Johns  Hopkins  University 
Philological  Association,  which  has  '  a  place  in  the  organic 
plan '  of  the  university,  was  held  in  the  month  of  February, 
1890.— B.  L.  G. 


98  UNIVERSITY    WORK  IN  AMERICA. 

by  bringing  the  older  and  younger  men  together, 
would  do  much  to  thaw  the  reserve  of  the  hier 
archical  relations  which  we  have  inherited  from  our 
kin  beyond  the  sea,  and  by  stimulating  production 
would  make  the  establishment  of  a  medium  of 
philological  intercommunication  a  more  urgent 
necessity  than  it  is  felt  to  be  now.  The  want  of 
such  a  medium  is  admitted  in  some  languid  way, 
but  there  seems  as  yet  to  be  no  acute  sense  of  the 
privation,  and  it  certainly  betokens  great  supineness 
on  the  part  of  our  scholars  that  a  country  which 
boasts  a  Journal  of  Speculative  Philosophy  should 
not  have  even  a  solitary  periodical  devoted  to  a 
science  which  counts  its  professed  votaries  by  hun 
dreds,  if  not  by  thousands,  and  that  our  professors 
and  teachers  should  be  satisfied  with  consigning  an 
occasional  paper  to  the  slow  current  of  a  volume  of 
transactions,  or  exposing  a  stray  lucubration  to 
struggle  for  notice  amidst  the  miscellaneous  matter 
of  a  review  or  the  odds  and  ends  of  an  educational 
magazine.1  No  greater  need  than  a  regular  channel 
of  intercommunication  among  the  philologians  of 
the  country  and  such  associations  as  have  been  sug 
gested  would  quicken  the  sense  of  want,  and  the 
need  would  become  a  demand. 

Local  associations  and  a  common  organ  would 
do  much  as  incentives  to  research.  Let  us  now 
look  at  the  sphere  of  research  and  ask,  Is  there  any 
work  for  Americans  to  do  in  the  department  of 
classical  philology — any  work  for  which  they  are 

1  This  sentence  led  to  the  establishment  of  the  American 
Journal  of  Philology,  which  I  have  edited  to  the  best  of  my 
ability  for  ten  years,  and  the  end  is  not  yet. — B.  L.  G. 


UNIVERSITY    WORK  IN  AMERICA.  99 

especially  fitted  either  by  natural  bent  or  peculiar 
environment?  Or,  to  put  the  question  in  its  mild 
est  form,  Is  there  any  work  in  which  they  are  not 
at  too  great  a  disadvantage  as  compared  with  their 
European  brethren  ?  The  temptation  to  answer  the 
question  in  the  negative  is  very  strong,  and  the 
classical  scholar  is  almost  excusable  for  yielding  to 
despondency  when  he  considers  the  problem  of 
truly  philological,  not  merely  school-book  work, 
under  the  conditions  of  American  life.  Who  is  a 
stranger  to  this  feeling,  and  who  has  a  more  bitter 
experience  of  it  than  those  of  us  who  for  a  large 
segment  of  their  intellectual  existence  were  cut  off 
not  only  from  contact  with  those  who  were  pursu 
ing  the  same  line  of  study  and  pressing  forward 
toward  the  same  ideals,  but  cut  off  from  new  books, 
new  journals,  nay,  every  sign  of  life  from  without, 
now  by  the  pillar  of  fire  which  is  called  war,  now  by 
the  pillar  of  cloud  which  is  called  poverty?  But 
there  is  no  need  for  any  true  philologian  to  lose  heart 
under  any  circumstances  that  leave  him  access  to 
the  great  originals  on  which  our  ultimate  knowledge 
of  antiquity  must  largely  depend,  and  the  com 
plaints  of  the  want  of  apparatus,  natural  as  they  are, 
must  not  be  suffered  to  serve  as  a  cover  for  in 
dolence.  Some  of  the  greatest  discoveries  in  phy 
sics  have  been  made  by  the  help  of  very  simple 
apparatus,  and  the  most  learned  men  are  not  always 
those  who  have  easiest  access  to  the  largest  libraries. 
Still,  no  one  who  has  to  consider  the  future  of 
higher  classical  work  in  this  country  can  blink  this 
question ;  and  while  it  is  impossible  to  discuss  the 
subject  in  detail  here,  some  disposition  must  be 


IOO         UNIVERSITY   WORK  IN  AMERICA. 

made  of  it.  In  the  first  place,  then,  the  disparity 
between  European  and  American  resources  is  dim 
inishing.  The  increased  facilities  of  intercommun 
ication  and  the  new  organizations  for  controlling 
the  mass  of  minor  philological  monographs  enable 
Americans  to  work  with  almost  the  same  advantages 
as  their  European  fellows.  Every  important  acces 
sion  to  philological  literature  may  be  laid  on  our 
tables  a  few  days  after  publication,  and  in  the  matter 
of  appropriation  and  assimilation  of  Continental 
results,  Americans,  partly  by  reason  of  their  train 
ing,  partly  by  reason  of  their  greater  receptivity,  are 
often  months  and  years  in  advance  of  their  English 
cousins,  who  never  seem  fully  awake  to  the  merits 
of  a  book  until  it  has  acquired  sufficient  reputation 
to  compel  a  translation  into  English — not  to  speak 
of  the  French,  whose  national  weakness  hitherto 
has  been  to  neglect  work  done  outside  of  their  own 
borders.  Indeed,  when  we  consider  the  rapid 
growth  of  our  American  libraries,  the  rapid  advance 
of  bibliography  in  this  country;  when  we  reflect 
that  a  large  portion  of  the  volumes  that  cumber 
European  collections  is  practically  useless,  and  that 
the  annual  appropriations  to  some  of  our  great 
libraries  will  soon  enable  us  to  compete  with  all  but 
the  very  largest  in  the  world ;  when  we  look  at  our 
accession-lists,  as  they  are  published  from  time  to 
time,  and  compare  the  slow  increment  of  some 
university  and  gymnasium  libraries  of  Germany,  in 
which,  for  all  that,  excellent  work  is  done — we  ought 
to  take  shame  to  ourselves  for  complaining  as 
loudly  as  we  do.  And  even  if  the  average  Amer 
ican  scholar  is  not  so  well  off  in  this  regard  as  the 


UNIVERSITY   WORK  IN  AMERICA.          IOI 

average  European,  still  he  should  bear  in  mind  that, 
after  all,  the  range  of  authorities  is  not  so  great,  the 
truly  indispensable  books  not  so  numerous,  as 
might  seem  at  first.  What  sensible  man  in  editing 
a  classic  would  undertake  to  read  every  edition,  say, 
of  the  much-edited  Horace?  What  student  of 
Sophocles  would  deem  it  his  duty  to  master  every 
treatise  in  Genthe's  catalogue  ?  Especially  ought 
we  to  practise  a  little  philosophy  as  to  the  value  of 
some  of  the  inaccessible  fruits  of  foreign  learning, 
those  two  or  three  berries  on  the  top  of  the  upper 
most  bough,  four  or  five  on  the  outmost  fruitful 
branches  thereof.  A  well-known  German  house 
offers  for  sale  sixty  thousand  dissertations.  If  you 
have  a  subject  in  hand,  send  for  everything  in  the 
line  of  your  work.  You  will  doubtless  get  a  fair 
proportion,  and  when  you  have  read  half  a  dozen, 
remember  that  those  you  have  not  got  are  no  better 
than  those  you  have  got,  and  do  not  mourn  as  those 
who  are  without  hope  for  the  missing  treatises.  So 
the  failure  to  secure  this  or  that '  doctor-dissertation ' 
ought  not  to  fill  the  investigator  with  hopeless 
gloom.  The  ordinary '  doctor-dissertation '  is  a  thing 
to  be  written,  not  necessarily  a  thing  to  be  read. 
It  is  a  vindication  of  the  young  man's  right  to  walk 
alone;  but  in  the  rarest  instances  does  it  give  him 
a  right  to  guide  others.  Not  unfrequently  these 
dissertations  have,  at  all  events,  the  semblance  of 
being  inspired,  and  the  disciple  rides  his  master's 
hobby  out  for  an  airing.  Sometimes — indeed  very 
frequently  in  the  present  drift  of  study — the  novice 
is  instructed  to  make  collections  in  certain  direc 
tions,  and  such  collections  may  possibly  be  used 


IO2         UNIVERSITY    WORK  IN  AMERICA. 

by  others  when  an  organic  principle  is  discovered  to 
vivify  them.  In  that  case  special  investigations  into 
the  usage  of  individual  authors  may  be  turned  to 
account,  although  so  closely  are  form  and  spirit 
interfused  that  the  lack  of  a  generous  command  of 
the  whole  subject  is  apt  to  mar  even  the  mechanical 
gathering  up  of  phenomena.  Still,  these  contribu 
tions  are  the  most  useful  that  young  men  can  make, 
and  as  this  is  a  line  of  work  which  is  as  open  to 
American  students  as  to  European,  far  be  it  from 
me  to  underrate  the  importance  of  it  in  this  attempt 
to  console  those  who  find  so  many  monographs 
beyond  their  reach.  But  granting  that  all  the 
literature  were  accessible,  every  edition  of  every 
author,  every  treatise  on  every  subject,  it  would  not 
be  desirable  to  dull  the  freshness  of  appreciation 
which  can  only  be  gained  by  direct  employment 
with  the  text,  with  the  theme.  It  is,  indeed,  dis 
couraging  in  the  extreme  to  find  after  a  long  search 
that  everything  has  been  done,  that  your  pet  theory 
has  been  anticipated  and  your  pet  illustration  has 
been  used  already ;  but  all  these  '  disillusionments  ' 
are  not  too  high  a  price  to  pay  for  the  confidence  of 
immediate  knowledge  and  the  rewards  which  cer 
tainly  await  a  careful  and  zealous  explorer.  The  field 
of  antique  literature  is  indeed  vast,  but  it  is  a  narrow 
range  as  compared  with  the  continent  of  commen 
tary  and  dissertation,  and  any  man  who  has  a 
scholar's  familiarity  with  Latin  and  Greek  can  sur 
vey  with  his  own  eyes  large  stretches  of  the  original 
sources  of  all  our  knowledge,  and  so  gain  new 
points  of  view  as  well  as  new  illustrations  for  his 
theme.  At  first  the  lists  of  parallel  passages,  the 


UNIVERSITY    WORK  IN  AMERICA.          1 03 

masses  of  references,  in  the  great  editions  are  simply 
appalling,  but  a  narrower  examination  will  show 
that  the  parallels  and  references  are  mainly  tradi 
tional,  and  that  the  individual  contribution  is  slight. 
It  would  be  invidious  to  specify,  invidious  to  point 
out  irrelevant  citations,  references  to  spurious  books, 
parallels  from  authors  that  do  not  belong  to  the 
same  sphere  of  illustration  and  owe  the  mention  of 
them  to  the  accidental  circumstance  that  the  editor 
has  had  them  for  one  reason  or  another  specially 
in  hand.  These  and  similar  blunders  and  short 
comings  are  much  more  likely  to  catch  the  eye  of  a 
student  who  has  gone  over  the  ground  for  himself 
and  has  exhausted  his  own  resources  first,  than  if 
he  had  been  content  to  make  a  selection  of  the  best 
things  of  others  and  to  salve  his  conscience  by 
hunting  up  a  few  little  matters  for  himself.  Let  any 
one  try  what  can  be  done  by  close  study  of  a  text, 
a  complete  absorption  into  the  spirit  of  the  author, 
and  by  a  wide  range  of  reading  in  cognate  direc 
tions,  before  he  says  that  Americans  have  nothing 
to  do  except  to  repeat  the  references  of  German 
books,  or,  at  most,  to  run  over  the  indexes  of  Ger 
man  editions.  To  have  full  organic  value  the  pas 
sages  must  be  read  in  situ,  and  every  one  who 
thinks  as  he  reads — it  is  not  every  one — must  have 
been  amused  by  the  droll  irrelevance  of  much  that 
is  dragged  in  by  way  of  illustrations,  as  well  as 
amazed  to  observe  the  number  of  side-lights  that 
have  never  been  brought  to  bear  on  the  theme  under 
consideration.  A  lurid  rhetorical  extravagance 
of  Juvenal  is  not  worth  a  tithe  so  much  to  the 
historian  of  manners  and  customs  as  a  quiet  hint  of 


104         UNIVERSITY    WORK  IN  AMERICA. 

Epictetus  which  is  not  recorded  in  the  index  rerum, 
from  which  so  much  learning  is  gathered.  To  be 
sure,  no  speedy  reward  is  to  be  expected  for  this 
work  except  the  delight  of  immediate  vision  and  the 
consciousness  of  faithful  effort ;  but  either  of  these 
should  be  enough  for  the  true  scholar.  Just  now 
all  that  is  expected  of  the  average  classical  philolo- 
gian  in  America  is  a  meek  reproduction  of  foreign 
wisdom,  but  the  way  to  better  things  is  open,  and  if 
the  younger  generation  of  American  university 
students  will  walk  in  it,  if  close  acquaintance  with 
the  sources  become  the  great  characteristic  of  our 
philology,  American  books  will  receive  higher 
approval  from  foreign  critics  than  the  half-pitying 
commendation  with  which  they  recognize  the  faith 
ful  use  of  the  most  recent  German  works  on  the 
subjects  treated.  But  in  order  to  walk  we  must 
stand  on  our  feet,  and,  so  standing,  discard  the  lead 
ing  strings  which  so  many  like  to  feel,  even  if  they 
do  not  lean  on  them. 

Of  course  if  we  persist  in  treading  the  eternal 
round  of  school-books,  there  will  be  less  room  for 
individual  effort;  but  even  in  the  most  thoroughly 
beaten  track  of  classic  literature  there  is  something 
yet  to  be  learned,  and  if  the  work  of  philology  is 
looked  at  from  the  historic  and  the  aesthetic  side, 
all  of  it  requires  to  be  done  over  again  every  few 
years.  With  the  progress  of  social  science,  with 
the  advancing  knowledge  of  historical  evolution, 
the  problems  of  antique  culture,  of  antique  legisla 
tion,  appear  in  new  lights  ;  and  these  problems  are 
problems  of  abiding  interest,  because  our  own  life 
is  involved  in  them.  Then,  apart  from  the  general 


UNIVERSITY   WORK  IN  AMERICA.          IO5 

improvement  in  method,  with  our  modern  facilities 
of  transmission  and  reproduction,  American  schol 
ars  need  not  be  shut  out  from  their  share  in  the 
positive  gain  to  be  derived  from  the  newly-discov 
ered  inscriptions  and  monuments,  which  are  adding 
more  and  more  definiteness  to  our  conception  of 
the  antique  world,  and  are  helping  us  to  a  better 
understanding  of  the  dialectic  life  of  the  .classic 
languages,  and  the  cantonal  and  provincial  life  of 
the  classic  peoples.  And  not  only  so,  but  ancient 
history  has  to  be  interpreted  into  terms  of  Amer 
ican  experience,  and  it  would  not  be  saying  too 
much  to  maintain  that  many  of  the  aspects  of 
American  life  enable  us  to  understand  the  ancients 
better  than  some  of  our  European  contemporaries 
can  do.  An  audacious,  inventive,  ready-witted 
people,  Americans  often  comprehend  the  audacious, 
inventive,  ready-witted  Greek  a  demi-mot,  while  the 
German  professor  phrases,  and  the  English  '  don ' 
rubs  his  eyes,  and  the  French  savant  appreciates 
the  wrong  half.  No  nation  is  quicker  than  ours  to 
take  in  the  point  of  a  situation,  and  there  is  no 
reason  discernible  why  Americans  should  not  excel 
in  the  solution  of  the  most  subtle  problems  of 
antique  manners  and  politics. 

But,  aside  from  the  special  aptitude  of  Americans 
for  the  appreciation  of  the  political  and  social  rela 
tions  of  antiquity,  due  partly  to  our  peculiar  endow 
ment,  partly  to  our  peculiar  position,  the  aesthetic 
problems  involved  in  the  study  of  classical  phil 
ology  shift  from  time  to  time :  the  great  masters 
ever  need  new  interpreters.  Even  the  best  work 
done  forty  or  fifty  years  ago  leaves  us  thoroughly 


IO6         UNIVERSITY    WORK  IN  AMERICA. 

dissatisfied.  Not  only  is  there  that  sense  of  short 
coming  which  we  feel  in  all  translations,  but  there 
is  often  a  repulsive,  often  a  ludicrous  incongruity, 
which  shows  a  change  of  aesthetic  basis.  We  might 
not  choose  Swinburne  to  interpret  Sappho  for  us ; 
but  Ambrose  Phillips's  versions,  which  hold  their 
own  in  our  manuals  by  a  ludicrous  anachronism, 
however  admired  in  their  day,  are  to  us  simply  out 
of  the  question  except  as  specimens  of  the  taste  of 
that  time.  Now  Americans  have  proved  and  are 
proving  every  day  that  they  do  not  lack  subtlety 
of  discernment,  delicate  appreciation,  just  compre 
hension,  and  responsive  sympathy  in  their  literary 
criticism  ;  but,  so  far  as  appears,  there  has  been 
little  independent  treatment  of  the  antique  authors 
in  this  regard.  Our  aesthetics  come  with  our  gram 
mars  from  Germany.  All  that  we  want  is  a  little 
candor,  a  little  courage,  courage  that  would  come 
from  immediate  study,  and  candor  that  would  com 
mand  consideration,  if  not  the  candor  of  partial 
knowledge. 

It  is  true  that  the  philologians  of  to-day,  while 
they  are  extending  the  lines  of  their  investigations 
in  one  direction,  are  narrowing  them  in  another ; 
and  so  sharply  objective  is  the  character  of  the 
dominant  school  of  philology  that  the  very  mention 
of  the  word  '  aesthetics  '  is  almost  enough  to  send 
the  utterer  into  the  camp  of  the  litterateur  and  the 
essayist.  Yet  it  is  my  firm  conviction  that  the 
exact  study  of  function  will  lead  to  valuable  results 
in  aesthetics  as  well,  that  the  comparative  study  of 
syntax  and  the  historical  study  of  syntax  are  des 
tined  to  give  us  a  firmer  foundation  and  a  clearer 


UNIVERSITY    WORK  IN  AMERICA.         ID? 

outline  for  the  whole  structure  of  style  than  would 
have  been  thought  possible  some  years  ago.  I 
appreciate  the  danger  of  the  study  as  well  as  its 
fascinations.  I  know  that  leading  critics  have  cau 
tioned  us  against  the  hasty  employment  of  gram 
matical  peculiarities  as  indications  of  spurious- 
ness  or  genuineness.  I  am  not  unmindful  of  the 
warning  that '  a  statistic  of  thought  is  a  monstrous 
delusion ';  but  it  remains  for  me  an  ultimate  prin 
ciple  that  a  true  organism  will  make  itself  felt  in 
every  fibre  of  its  structure,  and  wherever  you  can 
trace  growth  there  you  can  find  characteristic ;  and 
therefore  it  is  not  absurd  to  speak  of  the  aesthetics 
of  syntax.  But  whether  such  a  study  can  be  put 
on  a  scientific  basis  or  not,  there  is  no  question 
that  the  scientific  study  of  syntax,  or  rather  of 
function,  either  as  a  part  of  comparative  or  as  a 
part  of  historical  grammar,  is  a  field  which  calls  for 
any  number  of  laborers.  A  few  pioneers  have 
opened  avenues  here  and  there,  and  monographs 
on  isolated  points  or  separate  authors  are  appearing 
in  greater  and  greater  numbers  in  Germany.  But 
there  is  ample  room  for  workers  in  this  depart 
ment  ;  and  this  is  work  that  can  be  done  as  well 
here  as  in  Germany.  It  does  not  demand  the  vast 
apparatus  which  other  studies  seem  to  postulate, 
and  it  should  be  the  business  of  our  scholars  all 
over  the  land  to  lend  their  aid.  It  is  not  given  to 
every  one  to  reach  great  generalizations  ;  it  is  given 
to  almost  every  one  to  observe,  to  collate,  to 
arrange.  Here,  then,  is  a  province  which  has  not 
been  so  occupied  that  American  philologians  may 
not  find  in  it  abundant  room  for  the  native  sagacity, 


108         UNIVERSITY   WORK  IN  AMERICA. 

the  unresting  energy,  which  have  distinguished  our 
people  in  other  departments  of  science.  It  is,  in 
deed,  a  noble  province,  as  the  true  philologian 
knows,  and  he  was  a  great  scholar  in  other  lines  of 
work  who  in  his  Encyclopaedia  and  Methodology 
of  Philology  gives  to  grammar  the  place  of  honor, 
and  says,  with  an  emphasis  that  means  much  in  a 
man  of  Boeckh's  balance,  '  Grammar  is  the  highest 
problem  of  science.  It  is  the  tipiyKbs  ^aB^arwv  for 
philology.' 

As  for  lexicography,1  especially  Greek  lexico 
graphy,  no  one  can  tell  how  much  remains  to  be 
done.  The  history  of  words  or  constructions  is 
seldom  even  so  much  as  sketched,  and  the  vast 
department  of  synonyms,  which  must  be  approached 
by  each  nationality  from  its  own  basis,  is  almost 
untouched  in  English. 

We  cannot,  then,  vie  with  European  scholars  in 
the  study  of  antiquities  except  the  Cypriote;  we 
shall  not  have  the  same  facilities  for  making  our 
selves  accomplished  epigraphists  or  palaeographers, 
although,  by  ever-multiplying  means  of  reproduc 
tion,  inscriptions  and  manuscripts  are  not  so  remote 
from  us  as  they  once  were;  but  in  the  mastery  of 
the  secrets  of  antique  life,  in  the  cultivation  of  our 
perception  for  the  harmony  of  antique  expression, 
in  the  patient  disentanglement  of  the  web  of  the 
ancient  languages,  why  should  we  acknowledge  so 
hopelessly  our  impotence?  Why,  at  all  events, 

1  Unsere  jetzigen  Griechischen  Lexika  erheben  sich,  so  dank- 
bar  man.  den  Fleiss  der  Sammler  anerkennen  muss,  wesentlich 
nicht  iiber  den  Charakter  iiothdurftiger  Compilationen  fur 
praktische  Zwecke.  Zu  tieferen  Forschungen  liegen  nur  Anfange 
vor. — G.  Curtius,  Leipziger  Studien,  i.  56. 


UNIVERSITY    WORK  IN  AMERICA.          1 09 

should  we  not  do  enough  independent  work  to  give 
our  teaching  the  impress  and  the  inspiration  of  im 
mediate  knowledge  ? 

But  enough  has  been  said  on  this  score.  Let  us 
turn  to  the  university  as  the  training-school.  A 
university,  as  I  have  already  said,  is  not  an  academy 
of  sciences,  an  academy  of  inscriptions  and  belles- 
lettres.  It  is  a  school,  and  the  professors  are  not 
investigators  merely — they  are  teachers.  But  as  the 
German  universities  are  more  or  less  consciously 
our  ideal,  and  as  the  universities  are  doubtless  for 
Germany  the  great  centres  of  learned  research,  it  is 
very  natural  that  prominence,  perhaps  too  much 
prominence,  should  be  given  to  this  side  of  univer 
sity  work ;  and  nothing  is  more  common  than  a 
taunting  comparison  of  the  book  outcome  and  the 
money  income  of  English  and  German  professors. 
If,  however,  a  German  university  were  nothing  but 
a  book-making  and  a  dissertation-manufacturing 
community,  it  would  not  be  worth  so  much  to  the 
world  as  a  power  and  an  example.  And  if  it  should 
appear  that  there  is  too  much  writing  and  too  little 
teaching,  too  much  and  too  early  specialization  of 
professor  and  student  alike,  too  much  formal  lectur 
ing  and  too  little  active  interchange  of  ideas,  we 
shall  do  well  to  pause  before  we  undertake  to  import 
into  our  American  educational  system  German 
methods  with  which  Germans  themselves  are  becom 
ing  more  and  more  dissatisfied — to  say  nothing  of 
the  disparateness  of  the  German  and  the  American 
character.  The  German  lecture-system  has  its  ad 
vantages.  If  a  real  teacher  be  in  the  chair,  the  mere 
memory  of  his  manner  is  a  lifelong  inspiration;  but 


IIO         UNIVERSITY    WORK  IN  AMERICA. 

in  too  many  instances  the  German  course  of  lectures 
is  a  book  doled  out  in  small  slices/  plentifully  gar 
nished  with  the  inevitable  '  literature ';  and  as  the 
recollection  of  the  droning  delivery  is  anything  but 
pleasant,  so  the  inspection  in  after  days  of  the  care 
fully  written  notes  often  provokes  the  question, 
What  was  the  use  of  all  this  ?  Inspiration  there  was 
none ;  the  bibliography  is  antiquated  in  a  few  years ; 
the  crotchets  of  the  professor  seem  to  have  hitched 
themselves  to  the  pages  rather  than  the  great 
thoughts,  if  he  had  them,  and  Ritschl's  outspoken 
contempt  for  alte  Hefte  finds  ample  justification.  It 
is  true  that,  as  a  rule,  the  great  professors  are  well 
worth  hearing,  if  but  for  what  we  may  call  the 
catalytic  effect ;  but  it  is  also  true  that  the  students 
attend  too  many  lectures,  and  consequently  fail  to 
work  them  up,  and,  which  is  no  small  evil,  are  often 
forced  to  take  them  out  of  organic  succession  in 
order  to  hear  them  at  all.  There  is  a  theory  that 
studies  are  so  arranged  in  Germany  that  any  student 
who  stays  at  a  university  for  the  triennium  or  qua- 
driennium,  as  may  be  demanded  by  the  faculty,  will 
have  an  opportunity  of  making  the  round  of  the 
different  departments  in  their  due  order,  but  it  is  a 
mere  theory  for  philology — certainly  so  far  as  the 
smaller  universities  are  concerned;  and  when  we 

1  This  point  is  forcibly  put  by  Bona  Meyer,  who  says  : 
'  Die  Hauptgebrechen  der  jetzigen  Studienart  liegen  auch 
jetzt  noch  unstreitig  von  Seiten  der  Lehrer  in  dem  nicht  sel- 
tenen  Mangel  einer  klaren  Unterscheidung  zwischen  den  Be- 
durfnissen  ernes  Buches  und  denen  eines  Vortrages,  und  von 
Seiten  der  Studirenden  in  der  allzu  gehauften  Passivitat  des 
Horens  und  dem  allzu  einseitigen  Drangen  zu  den  Brod-  und 
Examinations-Studien.' 


UNIVERSITY    WORK  IN  AMERICA.          Ill 

add  to  this  the  natural,  and,  I  may  say,  to  some 
extent  healthy,  desire  to  migrate  from  university  to 
university  in  order  to  preserve  a  freedom  from  bias, 
the  difficulty  of  pursuing  a  proper  course  is  enhanced. 
If  the  young  men  who  take  their  doctor's  degree  in 
Germany  would  only  publish  in  their  vitae  the  titles 
of  the  lectures  they  attended  before  they  came  up  for 
examination,  we  should  have  an  exhibit  of  consider 
able  practical  value,  as  illustrating  the  necessarily 
scrambling  course  of  so  many  German  students. 

But  the  Germans  observed  long  ago  the  defects 
of  the  lecture-system  pure  and  simple.  The  aca 
demic  freedom,  of  which  they  are  so  justly  proud, 
is  a  great  thing,  but  all  students  are  not  ripe  for  it. 
More  guidance  would  do  no  harm,  though  it  need 
not  degenerate  into  the  tutorial  grind  of  England. 
And,  in  fact,  various  methods  have  been  pursued 
for  many  years  to  counteract  the  funnelling  process 
of  lectures.  In  the  physical  sciences  this  good 
work  is  from  the  beginning  an  organic  part  of 
the  study.  The  laboratory  balances  the  lecture. 
In  some  faculties  the  repetent,  or  *  coach',  plays 
an  important  part.  Then,  in  the  historical  studies, 
to  which  philology  belongs,  there  are  special  clubs 
formed  by  the  students  themselves,  there  are  private 
societies  conducted  by  the  professors  ;  but  the  great 
organized  agency  is  the  seminarium,  the  theory  of 
which  is  very  well  stated  by  the  Owens  College 
Extension  Commission  :  '  The  ordinary  lectures  of 
the  professors  being  continuous  discourses,  and  the 
students  being  hearers  only,  and  not  subject  to  any 
oversight  as  to  attendance  and  industry,  it  is  found 
that  this  system  does  not  suffice  for  the  training  of 


112         UNIVERSITY  WORK  IN  AMERICA. 

those  who  are  themselves  to  be  teachers.  To  meet 
this  want  the  seminarium  was  established.  A  lim 
ited  number  of  students/whose  merits  and  adequate 
preparation  are  ascertained,  are  in  the  seminarium 
drilled  in  the  manner  usual  in  college  lecture-rooms 
in  England,  but  with  the  special  object  of  qualifying 
them  for  original  investigation  and  for  the  higher 
teaching  posts/  This  is  the  theory ;  but  in  prac 
tice  so  much  depends  upon  the  individuality  of  the 
director  that  a  general  criticism  is  impossible  :  and 
to  pronounce  an  opinion  on  the  basis  of  personal 
impressions  now  a  quarter  of  a  century  old  would 
be  manifestly  unfair.1  At  the  same  time,  there  is  not 
a  point  in  which  those  impressions  have  not  been 
confirmed,  either  by  recent  writers  or  by  those  who 
are  fresh  from  the  universities  where  the  voices  of 
the  great  teachers  of  my  youth  have  not  so  long 
been  silent;  and  it  is  not  hazardous  to  maintain 
that  as  the  German  lecture-system  can  never  be 
transplanted  in  its  entirety  to  our  academic  soil,  so, 
for  many  reasons,  the  German  seminarium  must 
undergo  important  modifications,  at  least  in  philo 
logy,  if  it  is  to  be  fruitful  in  our  country. 

As  to  the  medium  in  which  the  philological  sem 
inarium  is  to  be  conducted,  there  is  something  to  be 
said  in  favor  of  retaining  Latin  for  certain  portions 
of  the  higher  work ;  but  if  this  is  done,  more  time 
must  be  devoted  to  the  acquisition  of  the  necessary 
facility  than  seems  to  be  allowed  to  it  now  in  Ger 
many.  I  have  been  ear-witness  of  all  manner  of 
absurdities,  which  were  not  less  absurdities  because 

1  Personal  impressions  renewed  since  1879  on^y  confirm  the 
view  presented  above. — B.  L.  G. 


UNIVERSITY  WORK  IN  AMERICA.  113 

they  were  learned.  The  Latin  academic  oration 
may  pass,  though  few  official  orators  study  the 
prime  condition  of  a  clear  and  simple  style,  and  the 
portentous  periodology  of  many  professors  of  elo 
quence,  as  they  are  called,  '  would  have  made 
Quintilian  stare  and  gasp.'  That  is  a  matter  of 
taste.  But  I  have  known  a  man  of  real  ability  to 
come  into  the  seminarium  with  a  ponderous  Latin 
treatise  on  Hesiod  which  he  read  with  the  utmost 
vehemence  and  volubility  for  the  space  of  three 
quarters  of  an  hour — vehemence  and  volubility 
which  would  have  made  even  his  German  a  sput 
ter  ;  and  under  the  spell  as  I  was  then,  I  cannot  say 
that  I  had  any  high  opinion  of  the  virtue  of  such 
an  exercise.  Training  the  ear  as  well  as  the  eye  is 
of  the  greatest  importance,  and  entirely  too  much 
neglected  in  our  ordinary  methods  of  instruction ; 
but  apart  from  the  modest  range  of  philological 
debate,  the  ear  should  be  trained  by  listening  to  the 
verses  and  the  periods  of  the  ancient  models  them 
selves.  If  the  discourse  of  the  professor  is  to  be  an 
immense  convolute  of  labored  Latinity,  if  the  stu 
dent  is  to  be  allowed  in  his  oral  use  of  Latin  to 
revel  in  false  quantities,  slipshod  syntax,  and  par 
rot-like  phrases,  the  sooner  the  Latin  medium  is 
done  away  with  the  better.  The  training  that  the 
German  boys  get  at  their  gymnasia  in  the  classic 
languages  is  much  better  than  ours,  as  is  shown  by 
the  difference  of  the  work  required  in  our  colleges 
and  the  German  universities,  although  the  students 
in  both  are  very  much  of  the  same  age ;  but  it 
would  be  a  great  mistake  to  suppose  that  the  few 
hours'  practice  in  Prima  will  give  a  young  man 


114         UNIVERSITY  WORK  IN  AMERICA. 

such  a  command  of  Latin  that  he  can  use  it  with 
ease  and  correctness  even  within  the  narrow  com 
pass  of  philological  subjects ;  and  while  the  pro 
fessor  may  at  times  be  moved  by  the  agony  of  his 
ears  to  remonstrate  with  the  candidatus  philologiae 
on  the  score  of  his  language,  such  '  expectorations  ' 
come  to  be  regarded  as  the-  obbligato  steam-whistle 
of  the  machine,  which  carries  the  passenger  to  the 
end  of  his  journey  for  all  that.  If  this  is  the  case 
in  Germany,  if  the  professors  there,  with  their  ad 
vanced  students,  find  it  hard  to  harmonize  attention 
to  the  form  with  attention  to  the  matter  of  the  dis 
cussions,  we  should  be  very  much  worse  off  here : 
and  for  some  time  at  least  Latin  exercises  of  this 
sort  should  be  intended  chiefly  for  the  study  and 
practice  of  the  form.  In  the  main,  then,  our  semi- 
narium  work  should  be  conducted  in  English, 
practice  in  oral  Latin,  and,  which  is  much  to  be 
desired,  in  oral  Greek,  being  relegated  to  special 
hours. 

Let  us  now  consider  the  matter,  the  work  itself. 
This,  as  has  already  been  stated,  depends  so  much 
on  the  personality  of  the  director  that  a  general 
criticism  is  hardly  possible.  The  professor  is  per 
fectly  free  to  teach  in  his  own  way,  and  it  is  sup 
posed  that  the  student  is  perfectly  free  to  learn  in 
his  own  way,  although  if  the  professor  be  a  man  of 
high  position  there  will  always  be  some  who  will 
consider  it  safer  to  learn  in  the  professor's  way.  If 
he  be  a  man  of  commanding  intellectual  force  it  is 
almost  impossible,  even  if  it  were  desirable,  to  resist 
the  pressure  of  the  head  of  the  school  and  the 
school  itself.  To  speak,  then,  of  the  work  in  a 


UNIVERSITY    WORK  IN  AMERICA.          11$ 

German  seminarium  as  if  it  were  uniform  would  be 
glaringly  inappropriate ;  and  an  exposition  of  the 
seminarium  studies  going  on  all  over  Germany, 
even  if  all  the  material  were  accessible,  would  re 
quire  too  much  space.  Still,  there  are  certain  lines 
of  work  which  in  the  nature  of  things  must  be  kept 
up  in  the  seminarium,  however  directed;  and  of 
some  of  these  I  would  say  a  word  so  far  as  they 
mayt  be  thought  applicable  to  the  state  of  things 
here.  In  Germany  the  seminarium  consists  of  the 
pick  of  the  students.  Full  membership  is  an  honor, 
and  the  meagre  endowment  of  the  position  is  not 
despised  in  a  poor  community.  There  are  regular 
members,  associate  members, aspirants, and  listeners. 
Here,  for  lack  of  material,  we  could  not  afford  to 
be  so  discriminating ;  and  we  should  be  obliged 
to  make  the  work  less  pretentious,  not  necessarily 
less  effective.  Two  things  the  seminarium  should 
strive  to  develop — power  of  presentation  and  power 
of  research.  The  former  is  too  much  neglected  in 
Germany,  and  ought  to  occupy  a  more  prominent 
position  in  the  training  of  the  future  scholar  than  it 
does  there.  It  is  not  given  to  every  one  to  make 
great  discoveries,  and  even  those  who  are  endowed 
with  keen  sagacity  or  a  happy  vein  of  divination 
vary  in  their  achievements  as  they  vary  in  their 
moods ;  but  every  one  should  be  trained  to  sort  his 
materials  in  an  orderly  manner  and  present  the  sum 
of  his  observations  clearly  and  succinctly.  And 
the  importance  of  this  is  too  much  overlooked  in 
the  German  schools  of  philology :  and  in  endeav 
oring  to  rear  an  American  school  of  classical  philo- 
logians  we  ought  not  to  encounter  the  reproach  of 


Il6         UNIVERSITY    WORK  IN  AMERICA. 

formlessness  in  our  studies  of  form,  of  being  aesthet- 
ical  in  everything  except  in  what  we  write.1  Of  course 
it  may  seem  schoolboy  work  to  make  abstracts,  to 
sketch  outlines  of  monuments  of  literary  art ;  but 
for  all  that  it  is  an  important  exercise,  and  skill  .in 
it  one  of  the  most  useful  facilities  that  a  philologian 
can  possess.  Such  an  outline  is  worth  all  the 
aesthetic  criticism  that  a  young  man  can  excogitate, 
because  in  working  it  out  he  must  necessarily  put 
himself,  to  some  extent,  in  sympathy  with  his 
model,  and  thus  learn  to  appreciate  transition  and 
motive  far  better  than  he  could  otherwise  have  done, 
far  better  even  than  if  he  had  translated  the  piece, 
because  the  translator  follows  the  author  too  closely 
to  see  the  track  he  is  going.  But  to  make  the  work 
truly  profitable  it  must  be  synthetic,  not  analytic — 
a  Nachdichten,  as  the  Germans  happily  call  it,  not  a 
dissection. 

A  regular  part  of  the  duties  of  the  seminarium 
consists  in  the  exegesis  and  textual  criticism  of  the 
classical  authors.  It  is  high  time  that  more  atten 
tion  were  paid  to  the  former  element  by  German 
editors,  the  best  of  whom  have  seemed  to  consider 
the  function  of  a  commentator  beneath  their  dig 
nity,  and  prefer  to  show  their  command  of  the 

1  Die  englischen  Universitaten  entwickeln  bei  ihren  Schiilerii 
nebeti  einem  lebendigeren  Geflihl  fur  die  Schonheit  und  Ju- 
gendfrische  des  Alterthums  auch  den  Sinn  fur  Feinheit  und 
Scharfe  des  sprachlichen  Ausdrucks  in  hochst  anerkennens- 
werthem  Grade,  und  dies  inacht  sich  bei  ihnen  namentlich 
auch  geltend  in  der  Weise.wie  sie  die  Muttersprache  zu  hand- 
haben  wissen.  In  dieser  Richtung  ist,  wie  ich  furchte,  eine 
der  schwachsten  Seiteii  des  deutschen  Jugendunterrichts  zu 
finden. — Helmholtz. 


UNIVERSITY    WORK  IN  AMERICA.          1 1/ 

author  in  hand  by  implication.  There  are  said  to 
be  signs  of  reaction.  Whether  the  seminaria  share 
in  it  I  do  not  know ;  but  so  long  as  the  directors 
prefer  criticism  to  hermeneutics — so  far  as  the  two 
can  be  separated — the  pupils  will  be  prone  to  spend 
most  of  their  time  over  various  readings.  Now,  a 
considerable  portion  of  the  business  of  the  future 
teacher  will  be  the  exposition  of  classical  texts  ;  and 
the  members  of  the  seminarium  should  be  taught 
how  to  construct  a  commentary  for  school  use,  as 
well  as  incited  to  attempt  the  elucidation  of  authors 
that  lie  outside  of  the  beaten  track.  This  is  not  the 
place  to  set  forth  the  virtues  of  a  commentator,  but 
many  of  the  qualities  that  are  required  may  be 
imparted  by  training — the  sense  of  proportion,  the 
suppression  of  the  inevitable  tendency  to  over-inter 
pretation,  the  rigorous  exclusion  of  irrelevant 
matter,  the  honest  grapple  with  real  difficulties.  A 
useful  study  for  the  young  philologian  would  be 
the  comparison  of  commentaries  from  different 
periods,  in  which  the  history  of  philology  would 
fairly  mirror  itself;  and  if  he  wishes  to  assure  him 
self  that  his  is  a  progressive  science,  he  will  be 
much  comforted  by  reading  the  lucubrations  of 
great  scholars  on  points  that  are  now  within  the 
knowledge  of  every  one. 

The  prerequisites  of  textual  criticism  are  so 
numerous  that,  except  in  case  of  great  native 
endowment,  it  is  hard  to  see  how  the  student  can  do 
much  more  than  make  a  beginning  in  his  university 
years  ;  and  yet  with  some  slight  palaeographical 
knowledge  and  some  second-hand  views  concerning 
families  of  manuscripts,  a  great  deal  of  juvenile 


Il8         UNIVERSITY    WORK  IN  AMERICA. 

criticism  is  done  in  Germany  and  elsewhere,  largely 
of  the  conjectural  sort.  But  it  is  not  enough  to 
write  the  peccant  words  in  uncials  and  stare  at 
them  until  something  suggests  itself  more  satis 
factory  to  you  than  the  text.  In  order  to  restore 
the  lost  fibre  you  must  know  every  other  fibre  ;  and 
conjectural  criticism,  apart  from  a  thorough  knowl 
edge  of  an  author,  no  matter  how  successful,  is  but 
a  genial  guess.  And  as  for  the  '  duodecimo  critics ', 
as  the  Germans  would  call  them,  who  are  publishing 
their  adversaria,  miscellanea,  and  collectanea  in 
imitation  of  Madvig  and  Cobet,  many  of  them 
should  be  impaled  in  the  seminaria  as  warnings 
against  rash  generalizations  and  wanton  disregard 
of  the  laws  of  grammar.  Nothing  can  be  more 
revolting  than  a  whoop  of  triumph  over  a  '  lucky 
divination ',  which  the  uniform  usage  of  the  language 
shows  to  be  an  impossibility  or  the  habit  of  the 
author  proves  to  be  utterly  unnecessary. 

Critical  studies  should  certainly  form  a  prominent 
part  of  the  seminarium  training,  but  they  should  not 
absorb  all  the  energy  of  the  class.  But,  after  all, 
the  handling  of  the  authors  does  not  appear  to  the 
member  of  the  German  seminarium  as  the  main 
thing.  The  Arbeit  is  the  crown  of  the  seminarium, 
as  the  Heft  is  the  glory  of  the  lecture.  The  Arbeit 
is  supposed  to  represent  original  research.  To 
develop  this  power,  not  given  in  its  highest  sense 
to  many,  is  indeed  one  of  the  most  precious  results 
of  university  training.  But  there  is  research  and 
research.  Some  investigations  involve  little  more 
head-work  than  the  sorting  of  nails,  while  some 
bring  into  play  every  high  faculty  of  understanding 


UNIVERSITY   WORK  IN  AMERICA.          1 19 

and  imagination.  It  may  be  well  sometimes  to 
temper  the  enthusiasm  of  those  who  consider  them 
selves  qualified  for  more  exalted  activity  by  forcing 
them  to  perform  those  mechanical  tasks  which  are 
inevitable  in  all  prolonged  research,  practising  the 
eye,  training  the  hand,  and  breaking  in  the  eager 
feet  to  a  steady  pace.  But  if  there  is  any  capacity  for 
higher  things,  the  student  should  be  encouraged  to 
put  to  the  test  his  right  to  independent  research. 
Now,  it  is  in  this  department  that  the  most  difficult 
work  of  the  university  teacher  lies:  most  difficult 
because  it  cannot  be  achieved  by  mere  industry. 
True,  study  can  do  a  great  deal.  A  wide  knowledge 
will  reveal  many  gaps  that  are  yet  to  be  filled ;  but 
if  the  teacher  tells  the  student  too  much,  he  is 
virtually  doing  the  work  himself,  and  doing  it  imper 
fectly,  besides  destroying  the  spirit  of  initiative 
which  is  the  great  gain  of  the  whole  matter ;  if  he 
tells  him  too  little,  the  young  man  is  apt  to  flounder 
hopelessly  in  a  Serbonian  bog  of  extemporized 
erudition.  Some  professors  cannot  imagine  any 
greater  happiness  for  a  student  than  to  work  in  the 
same  direction  with  the  master,  and  the  native  bent 
of  the  pupil  goes  for  nothing  in  the  calculation ; 
while  others  genially  toss  the  neophyte  into  a  mass 
of  controversy  of  which  the  younger  man  knows 
nothing,  the  older  man  very  little ;  and  at  the  end 
the  teacher  is  not  competent  to  criticise  without  a 
careful  study  of  the  whole  question,  which  he  may, 
of  course,  accomplish  more  rapidly  than  the  begin 
ner — if  he  has  nothing  better  to  do  on  his  own 
account.  It  is  indeed  a  glorious  thing  to  make  some 
substantial  addition  to  science,  however  small  it 


I2O         UNIVERSITY    WORK  IN  AMERICA. 

may  be.  It  is  the  promise  of  future  usefulness,  the 
earnest  of  a  higher  life;  but,  like  other  glorious 
things,  it  must  be  worked  for,  and  the  theme  should 
evolve  itself  out  of  a  range  of  reading  ;  and  in  the 
early  stages  of  university  study  especially,  more 
good  might  be  done  in  the  way  of  training  by  putting 
questions  that  have  already  been  solved,  and  fur 
nishing  the  materials  for  problems  that  have  been 
triumphantly  settled,  than  by  forcing  the  student  to 
attack  such  fresh  subjects  as  may  be  hastily  started 
for  his  experiments.  The  future  mathematician,  the 
future  chemist,  the  future  professor  of  physics,  have 
to  undergo  a  long  apprenticeship  in  such  solutions. 
The  future  philologian  is  too  often  compelled  to 
grapple  with  questions  the  conditions  of  which  he 
cannot  possibly  command.  It  is  true  that  any 
subject  that  stands  in  organic  connection  with 
philological  science  cannot  be  pursued  without 
ultimately  involving  the  whole ;  but  it  is  not  a  matter 
of  indifference  from  what  point  you  start ;  and  the 
most  fruitful  work  is  that  which  grows  out  of  wider 
study.  No  man  can  labor  in  any  portion  of  his 
department  without  finding  much  that  is  unsettled ; 
and  a  genuine  curiosity  once  excited,  the  punctum 
saliens  of  scientific  life  is  there.  To  put  into  the 
hand  of  a  young  man  the  first  dissertation  at  your 
elbow  and  bid  him  pick  it  to  pieces,  or  to  assign 
to  two  callow  youngsters  sides  in  a  philological 
discussion — these  processes,  so  familiar  in  German 
universities,  do  not  lead  to  the  highest  results,  nor  do 
they  breed  the  best  habits  of  mind.  The  criticism 
should  follow  an  independent  study  of  the  subject. 
The  disputation  should  grow  out  of  a  genuine 


UNIVERSITY    WORK  IN  AMERICA.          121 

difference  of  views  between  those  who  are  working 
in  the  same  direction.  It  should  not  be  what  the 
German  Burschen  call  a  duel  pro  patria — a  mere 
official  combat.  All  such  sophistic  displays  are 
remnants  of  an  earlier  system  of  education;  and  the 
greater  the  success,  the  worse  the  habit  that  is 
engendered  of  criticising  for  the  sake  of  showing 
superiority,  and  the  more  acrimonious  the  tone  of 
the  controversialist,  who  at  last  fuses  the  personality 
of  the  investigator  with  the  truth  which  he  is 
supposed  to  be  seeking,  and,  like  a  famous  German 
scholar,  declares  any  denial  of  his  principles  to  be 
the  mysterious  sin  against  the  Holy  Ghost.  At  all 
events,  in  our  endeavors  to  organize  university 
work  here,  let  us,  in  appropriating  the  good  that 
Germany  has  to  show  us  in  abundant  measure, 
learn  to  avoid  the  evil.  Special  studies  by  all  means, 
special  even  to  the  minutest  variations  of  form  and 
structure,  to  the  exactest  detail  of  statistic.  But,  for 
all  that,  let  us  not  lose  sight  of  the  magnificent  idea 
of  philology,  which  is  instinct  with  the  life  of 
humanity.  Let  not  aesthetical  babblers  and  philo 
sophical  phrase-mongers  frighten  us  from  aesthetics 
and  philosophy  into  arid  regions  whither  no  one 
will  follow  us,  and,  which  is  worse,  whence,  we 
ourselves  may  never  find  it  possible  to  escape. 
In  Germany  classical  philology  may  survive  for 
generations  by  virtue  of  the  organizations  already 
established,  but  in  this  country,  where  the  scientific 
study  of  the  department  is  yet  to  be  built  up  to  the 
university  standard,  it  would  be  folly  to  sever  such 
connection  as  the  classics  have  with  the  life  of  the 
people.  French  scholars  sometimes  sigh  for  German 


122         UNIVERSITY    WORK  IN  AMERICA. 

methods  of  instruction  and  research ;  but  the  wide 
circulation  of  the  classical  studies  of  such  writers  as 
Boissier  and  Perrot  is  a  good  sign  of  the  intelligent 
interest  of  the  cultivated  public  in  these  subjects, 
and  without  such  an  intelligent  interest  the  depart 
ment  must  die.  Almost  every  Greek  and  Latin 
writer  of  note  has  been  translated  into  French.  How 
many  gaps  there  are  in  English  no  philologian 
needs  to  be  reminded.  The  Didot  collection  has 
been  of  immense  service  to  classical  letters,  and  I 
remember  the  emphasis  with  which  one  of  the  lead 
ing  philologians  of  our  century  dwelt  on  the  value 
of  the  Latin  translation  which  accompanies  the 
Greek  text  in  that  series,  and  the  generous  heat 
with  which  he  warned  his  disciples  against  alienat 
ing  those  who  were  in  sympathy  with  the  classics 
by  convenient  sneers  at  defects  in  technical  scholar 
ship.  Here,  certainly,  we  need  all  the  support  we 
can  get,  and  the  university  professor,  while  making 
his  researches  and  while  training  those  who  are  to  be 
the  teachers  of  the  country,  should  not  forget  his 
duty  to  a  wider  public.  The  danger  of  this,  however, 
may  not  seem  to  be  imminent,  and  for  the  present 
it  may  be  more  important  to  insist  on  the  esoteric 
work  and  to  study  the  conditions  of  higher  philo 
logical  training  in  American  universities.  But,  as 
has  been  intimated  in  a  previous  portion  of  this 
essay,  the  tendency  of  our  younger  university  men 
will  naturally  be  to  over-specialization ;  and  while 
it  is  very  true  that  the  transition  from  what  may  be 
called  the  formal  side  of  philology  to  the  study  of 
history,  antiquities,  and  art  is  much  easier  than  the 
reverse,  and  should  therefore  form  the  staple  of 


UNIVERSITY    WORK  IN  AMERICA.          123 

university  instruction,  no  one,  teacher  or  scholar, 
should  so  lose  himself  in  grammatical  and  crit 
ical  studies  as  to  become  insensible  of  the  deep 
truth  which  is  embodied  in  the  old  term,  the 
'  humanities '. 


GRAMMAR  AND  ESTHETICS 


GRAMMAR  AND  AESTHETICS. 

Minute  specialization  is  one  of  the  prominent 
features  of  modern  science.  It  is  not  peculiar  to 
modern  culture,  for  subdivision  of  the  professions  is 
as  old  as  the  Pyramids.  In  the  Athens  of  the  best 
times  there  were  those  who  made  their  living  by  the 
manufacture  of  hair-nets.  An  epigram  of  Martial 
informs  us  that  there  were  surgeons  in  Rome  who 
limited  their  practice  to  the  effacement  of  the  scars 
that  disfigured  the  persons  of  branded  slaves.  But 
the  narrowness  of  a  handicraft  is  different  from  the 
narrowness  of  an  intellectual  pursuit,  or  rather  an 
intellectual  pursuit  is  reduced  by  this  narrowness  to 
a  handicraft;  and  in  this  second  half  of  the  nine 
teenth  century  the  joyous  and  adventurous  swing 
of  the  human  mind  through  the  range  of  knowledge 
and  science  which  marked  the  first  half  has  been 
quieted  down  to  a  sober  pace,  not  to  say  a  treadmill 
gait.  The  line  along  which  the  earlier  investigators 
flamed  is  now  traversed  by  the  solitary  track-walker, 
who  turns  his  lantern  on  every  inch  of  the  ground, 
and  travel  is  often  interdicted  on  account  of  the 
insecurity  of  the  road.  So  much  the  better  for  those 
who  are  to  come  after  us,  but  meanwhile  life  is 
lonely  for  the  explorer.  For  times  come  to  every 
such  man  when  he  feels  an  imperious  necessity  of 
justifying  himself  to  them  that  are  without,  of  seek 
ing  a  larger  audience  than  the  narrow  circle  of  his 


128  GRAMMAR   AND  ESTHETICS. 

disciples  and  associates.     True,  the  utter  failure  to 
come  to  an  understanding  with  the  rest  of  the  world 
often  sends  the  student  back   to  his  special  work 
with  a  determination  never  again  to  tempt  any  com 
munication   with   his   fellows  except  on  the  most 
ordinary  topics  of  social  converse,  and  to  lead  his 
intellectual   life  alone.1     The  old  jarring   contrast 
between  the  man  of  practice  and  the  man  of  theory 
makes  itself  felt  in  every  fibre  of  a  nature  that,  by 
its  daily  and  hourly  occupation,  is  made  sensitive 
to  the  slight  vibrations  that  are  unheeded  by  the 
so-called  men  of  the  world,  the  men  of  affairs.    One 
of  the  most  famous  pictures  of  this  contrast  has  been 
drawn  by  Plato  in  his  Theaetetus,  in  which  Thales 
appears  as  the  type  of  the  philosopher,  the  thinker, 
who  falls  into  a  well  while  star-gazing,  and  is  laughed 
at  by  his  merry  Thracian  maid-servant  for  not  seeing 
that  which  is  before  his  feet.    Your  antique  scholar, 
like  your  modern,  goes  mooning  about  the  city.    He 
does  not  know  the  way  to  'Change;  he  cannot  tell 
you  where  the  court-house  is  or  the  city  hall.    He  is 
a  stranger  to  clubs  and  parties  and  dinners  and 
banquets.     He  is  profoundly    ignorant    of  family 
history  and  family  gossip.     He  is  such  a  university 
man  as  the  London  Times  described  a  few  years 
ago:   'at   sea  he  is  a  landlubber,  in  the  country 
a  cockney,  in  town  a  greenhorn,  in  business  a  simp 
leton,  in  pleasure  a  milksop.'     We  all  know  the 
man,  although  in  the  movement  of  modern  life  the  type 
is  becoming  less  common  even  in  Germany,  once 
the  habitat  of  intellectual  oddities  and  unpractical 

1  This  «  Suspirium  Grammatici '  was  published  in  the  Prince 
ton  Review  for  May,  1883. 


GRAMMAR   AND  ESTHETICS.  1 29 

dreamers.  For  this  change  the  Empire  may  possibly 
be  responsible,  but  certain  it  is  that  such  a  figure  as 
Freytag's  Professor  Raschke,  in  the  '  Lost  Manu 
script  ',  will  soon  be  as  extinct  as  the  dodo. 

Still,  while  the  external  differences  are  more  and 
more  effaced,  and  the  professor  is  not  singled  out 
by  his  manners  and  his  conversation,  the  inner 
dissidence  will  remain,  and  may  perhaps  increase 
with  the  advance  of  specialization.  The  professor, 
the  student  may  become  more  like  the  rest  of  the 
world,  but  the  heart  of  his  life  will  be  more  remote 
from  the  bulk  of  mankind  than  was  the  case  with 
the  ancient  scholar,  whose  range  of  sympathies  was 
necessarily  wide.  Then,  to  come  back  to  Plato's 
philosopher,  his  ideal  sage  is  utterly  indifferent  to  the 
praise  or  blame  of  the  world,  whereas  in  the  modern 
specialist  we  often  find  a  sensitiveness  which  is  bred 
by  the  special  studies  themselves.  Every  one  can 
not  attain  to  the  philosophic  calm  which  is,  in  the 
last  analysis,  philosophic  selfishness,  and  which 
makes  us  resentful  when  we  think  of  Plato  and  of 
Goethe,  though  not  when  we  think  of  Shakespeare, 
for  with  Shakespeare  we  do  not  quarrel  any  more 
than  we  do  with  the  nature  of  things.  And  so  it 
is  hard  for  one  who  is  always  seeking  to  find  or 
to  frame  the  key  to  the  beautiful,  when  the  convic 
tion  is  borne  in  upon  him  that  the  more  successful 
he  is  in  his  quest,  the  more  certain  he  is  to  be  set 
down  among  the  mere  locksmiths  who  are  not 
suffered  to  enjoy  the  treasures  which  their  patience 
and  ingenuity  have  disclosed.  The  fewest  have  the 
divine  faculty  of  imagination  which  is  necessary  to 
intellectual  sympathy,  and  a  vivid  representation  of 


I3O  GRAMMAR  AND  ESTHETICS. 

the  conditions  of  another's  life  is  possible  only  for 
chosen  souls.  Hence  much  blundering  in  all 
manner  of  missionary  effort.  To  popularize  without 
vulgarizing  is  one  of  the  most  difficult  of  arts,  and 
the  specialist,  afraid  of  vulgarizing  or  unwilling  to 
vulgarize,  is  apt  to  lose  himself  in  technicalities 
which  the  outsider  cannot  follow.  Nor  is  the 
unlucky  specialist  much  comforted  by  those  who, 
recognizing  in  him  the  specialist,  patronize  him  by 
a  real  or  simulated  interest  in  his  line  of  work. 
The  Grecian  does  not  like  to  be  told  that  his  inter 
locutor  used  to  be  fond  of  Greek  when  he  was  at 
college  and  still  keeps  it  up  after  a  fashion.  This  is 
in  its  way  almost  as  bad  as  the  threadbare  and, 
because  threadbare,  uniformly  successful  jest  about 
Greek  roots.  And  so,  between  the  condescension 
of  those  who  wish  to  make  some  acknowledgment 
of  the  value  of  the  special  work,  and  the  rudeness 
of  those  who  repeat  the  trite  jokes  of  the  outside 
world,  the  scholar,  the  student,  the  investigator 
withdraws  into  himself,  himself  disheartened  despite 
philosophy,  and  the  world  possibly  the  poorer. 

Now,  of  all  the  special  lines  of  work,  among  the 
most  arid  to  the  average  mind  is  that  of  grammar. 
By  grammar  is  not  meant  the  '  science  of  language ', 
so  called.  The  success  of  various  popular  exhibi 
tions  of  this  department  shows  that  it  is  possible  to 
interest  a  very  wide  circle  in  the  curious  facts  and 
glittering  theories  that  lie  on  the  track  and  encom 
pass  the  circuit  of  these  studies.  What  I  mean  is 
grammar  proper,  that  very  grammar,  carried  to  a 
higher  power,  which  is  the  detestation  of  most 
youthful  minds.  No  study  more  fascinating  to 


GRAMMAR   AND  ESTHETICS.  13! 

those  who  are  addicted  to  it;  none  more  repulsive 
to  the  natural  man.  The  average  child  hates  parsing 
worse  than  he  does  arithmetic.  Of  course,  the 
attitude  of  the  modern  mind  toward  grammar  is 
different  from  that  of  the  ancient  nations,  for  gram 
mar  is  an  inheritance  with  us,  to  them  it  was  a  slow 
growth ;  it  has  passed  into  our  mental  processes, 
to  them  it  was  a  process  apart.  Still,  scientific 
grammar  in  its  strictest  sense  is  a  horror  even  to  a 
large  class  of  people  of  cultivation.  The  average 
literary  man  cordially  dislikes  the  grammarian — 
or  heartily  despises  him ;  and  as  grammar  becomes 
more  and  more  detailed,  as  phonetics  develop  more 
and  more,  and  syntax  assumes  more  and  more  the 
alluring  shape  of  a  census-table,  there  is  increasing 
danger  lest  philology  shrivel  up  into  mere  statistics, 
and  aesthetics  be  relegated  to  the  mere  dilettanti. 

Phonology,  to  begin  with  that,  has  grown  into  a 
science  which  threatens  to  overshadow  the  rest  of 
philology;  and  though  no  one  would  wish  to  with 
hold  from  the  school  of  the  Junggrammatiker  the 
tribute  of  admiration  for  the  thoroughness  of  their 
method,  which  brings  phonetic  phenomena  under 
rules  of  sharp  physical  consistency,  one  wishes  a 
second  life  for  this  new  line  of  work,  as  Lobeck  did 
when  he  declined  to  go  into  Sanskrit.  The  theory  of 
formation,  instead  of  being  simplified  by  the  advance 
of  science,  has  become  greatly  complicated,  and  the 
frank,  objective  way  in  which  facts  are  put  remind  one 
very  much  of  the  early  machinery  of  grammar.  For 
instance,  the  ancient  grammarians  divided  the  Greek 
declensions  into ' parisyllabic '  and '  imparisyllabic ' — 
one  of  those  inorganic  arrangements  that  contain  a 


132  GRAMMAR  AND  ESTHETICS. 

germ  of  organic  truth.  Needless  to  say,  such  a  divi 
sion  was  practically  of  no  moment.  The  cases  went 
their  own  sweet  way,  and  well-meaning  attempts  to 
reduce  the  inflections  to  order  resulted  in  a  formid 
able  list  of  declensions.  In  like  manner  the  reduction 
of  the  Greek  declensions  to  three,  and  ultimately  to 
two,  was  considered  a  great  advance  in  the  early  part 
of  this  century.  Now  that  has  proved  to  be  a  failure 
so  far  as  simplification  goes,  and  advanced  grammar 
follows  mechanically  the  endings  of  the  stems.  Thus 
we  oscillate  from  diversity  to  unity,  from  unity  to 
diversity  again.  Syntax  has  divorced  itself  from 
logic.  All  the  grand  generalizations  in  which  the 
first  scientific  grammarians  indulged  have  been 
abandoned,  and  it  is  no  disgrace  to  decline  giving  a 
definition  of  case  or  tense  or  mood  ;  it  is  only  a  wise 
reserve.  No  longer  logic-mad,  your  modern  gram 
marian  is  statistic-mad.  It  is  useless  to  tell  him  that 
statistic  is  nothing  unless  it  embody  some  idea.  The 
plan  is  to  get  all  the  empty  shells  ready  in  case  a 
soul  should  be  found  to  occupy  them.  Arrange  your 
facts  in  some  orderly  manner,  no  matter  how 
mechanical,  and  the  seeing  eye  will  discern  vital 
principles.  To  an  outsider  this  study — some  might 
hesitate  to  call  it  a  study — seems  incredibly  dull, 
seems  to  be  work  that  ought  to  be  assigned  to 
a  servtis  litterarius  as  brainless  as  Caravella,  the 
author  of  the  '  Index  Aristophanicus  ',  that  marvel  of 
patience  and  stupidity;  or  as  Cruden,  the  author  of  the 
Concordance,  who  was  another  semi-idiot.  And  yet 
questions  of  a  higher  nature  are  constantly  arising 
in  the  midst  of  such  work,  questions  that  cannot  be 
delegated  to  inexperienced  and  thoughtless  com- 


GRAMMAR   AND   ESTHETICS.  133 

pilers ;  and  there  comes  to  the  writer  the  grim 
consolation  that  whatever  befalls  the  theory,  the 
facts  will  stand.  Veitch's  '  Greek  Verbs,  Irregular 
and  Defective  ',  will  always  be  of  more  real  value 
than  most  of  Gottfried  Hermann's  grammatical  the 
ories  ;  and  there  is  much  more  in  Veitch  than  a 
mere  collector.  But  at  times  even  the  most  deter 
mined  statistician  grows  weary.  He  repeats  to 
himself  the  warning  that  he  must  not  theorize  before 
he  gets  all  the  facts  together,  and  yet,  while  the  hod 
may  be  a  model  hod  and  the  bricks  without  flaw,  the 
question  will  come  up,  Are  we  never  to  use  mortar, 
even  if  it  be  untempered  mortar  ? 

Such  is  the  present  condition  of  grammar.  It 
shows  a  strong  tendency  to  assume  the  mathe 
matical  formula,  and  outsiders  ask,  What  is  the  use  of 
this  array  of  figures  ?  The  answer  is  mainly  neg 
ative,  at  least  in  the  present  stage  of  inquiry,  and 
insiders  themselves  show  here  and  there  impatience. 
Grammar  is  becoming  a  dry  and  thirsty  land,  and 
the  grammatical  Achsah  may  well  say,  '  Thou  hast 
given  me  a  south  land;  give  me  also  springs  of 
water.' 

Meanwhile  aesthetic  criticism  is  going  its  own 
way,  a  '  primrose  path  of  dalliance  '  with  fine  sub 
stantives,  superfine  adjectives — a  path  which  is  apt 
to  lose  itself  in  mere  finical  fault-finding  or  sympa 
thetic  phrase-mongery.  True,  the  critics  of  our  day 
are  not  the  failures  that  Lord  Beaconsfield's  epigram 
would  make  them  out  to  be.  Like  many  other 
strictures  of  that  cynical  statesman,  this  does  not 
apply  to  the  present  time ;  it  is  purely  retro 
spective.  Our  foremost  critics  are  our  foremost 


134  GRAMMAR   AND   ESTHETICS. 

producers,  and  the  man  whom  many  would  consider 
the  first  critic  of  our  time  is  acknowledged  to  be 
one  of  the  best  writers  of  our  time.  No  man's  style 
is  more  envied  than  Matthew  Arnold's,  and  that  by 
those  whose  envy  is  a  compliment.  Still  there  is  a 
widespread  distrust  as  to  the  ultimate  value  of  all 
the  aesthetic  criticism  of  the  day,  sympathetic  or 
other.  The  antique  critic,  as  we  shall  see,  went 
into  tangible  details.  He  left  a  margin  for  unrea 
soned  perception,  for  direct  intuition,  but  his 
grounds  are  for  the  most  part  susceptible  of  test. 
Even  the  robust  critic  of  the  Johnsonese  school  is 
comprehensible,  is  refutable,  if  need  be.  Not  so  the 
supersubtle  genius  of  the  present  day.  He  poses  a 
line  of  poetry  and  then  poses  himself  before  the  line, 
and  if  you  do  not  see  all  poetry  in  that  line,  or  do 
not  hear  all  poetry  in  that  line,  you  are  blind  and 
deaf.  So  Mr.  Arnold  in  his  introductory  essay  to 
Ward's  '  English  Poets  '  gives  a  series  of  test  verses 
for  the  appreciation  of  higher  poetry.  His  Dante 
line  is 

*  In  la  sua  volontade  e  nostra  pace.' 

His  Chaucer  line  is 

'  O  martyr  souded  in  virginitee.' 

He  strikes  these  chords  very  deftly;  he  repeats 
these  verses  as  a  supernal  melody.  Who  knows 
what  mood  is  associated  in  his  poetic  brain  with 
that  melody?  The  overtone  is  perhaps  what  he 
hears.  If  any  ordinary  mortal  like  the  present 
writer  should  set  up  another  verse,  say 

«  La  creatura  ch'  ebbe  il  bel  sembiante  ', 


GRAMMAR   AND  ESTHETICS.  135 

Mr.  Arnold  and  Mr.  Arnold's  admirers  might  see, 
might  hear  nothing  special  in  that ;  and  yet  perhaps 
something  could  be  said  for  a  verse  which  concen 
trates  all  the  doom  of  Lucifer,  as  well  as' for 

'  In  la  sua  volontade  6  nostra  pace  ', 

and  many  a  Chaucerian  scholar  may  have  his 
favorite  instead  of 

'  O  martyr  souded  in  virginitee  '. 

But  any  one  who  attempts  to  mediate  between 
two  extremes  is  in  danger  of  being  torn  to  pieces 
by  the  wild  horses  that  he  is  attempting  to  yoke 
together;  more  furious  and  unbecoming  contro 
versy  than  has  of  late  raged  between  poets  and  philo- 
logians  would  be  hard  to  find  in  the  unpleasant 
annals  of  the  quarrels  of  authors,  and  one  would  not 
like  to  have  his  family  name  maltreated,  or  to  be 
shown  up  as  a  dullard  and  pedant.1  Still,  with 
the  full  consciousness  of  the  risk,  he  who  is  a  lover 
of  grammatical  as  well  as  of  literary  study  can 
hardly  refrain  from  making  at  least  some  effort  to 
show  how  stronger  hands  than  his  may  yet  succeed 
in  the  work  of  reconciliation.  There  are  men,  and 
those  not  a  few,  who  have  at  once  the  liveliest 
delight  in  the  observation  of  grammatical  phe 
nomena  and  the  keenest  appreciation  of  literary 
beauties.  Do  these  faculties  work  side  by  side 
without  any  correlation  ?  It  was  said  of  Faraday 

1  Swinburne's  name  has  been  turned  by  one  of  his  assailants 
into  Pigsbrook ;  and  the  poet  in  one  of  his  mildest  passages 
speaks  with  characteristic  alliteration  of  'the  blackguard's 
loaded  bludgeon  of  personalities  ',  '  the  dastard's  sheathed 
dagger  of  disguise  '. 


136  GRAMMAR  AND  ESTHETICS. 

that  he  had  two  lives  which  he  kept  apart ;  that  he 
shut  his  laboratory  when  he  went  into  his  oratory. 
Is  a  similar  statement  true  of  the  scholar  ?  Is  his 
enjoyment  of  the  literary  side  of  his  work  entirely 
independent  of  the  scientific  side  ?  Are  contem 
plation  and  analysis  completely  divorced  ?  Every 
one  who  has  attempted  the  close  grammatical  study 
of  a  supreme  work  of  art  knows  how  hard  it  is  to 
keep  steadily  at  the  task  when  the  passion  of  the 
piece  grows  strong.  The  note-book  ought  to  drop 
from  the  hand  when  Odysseus  stands  forth  revealed. 
Then,  like  the  hero,  the  reader  strips  off  the  rags  of 
grammar  and  goes  into  the  fight.1  But  for  all  that 
the  note-book  should  be  picked  up  again  and  the 
patient  assemblage  of  facts  resumed.  In  art  nothing 
is  small ;  and  how  fully  this  was  appreciated  in 
antiquity  is  shown  by  the  study  of  the  literary 
judgments  of  the  great  critics  of  antiquity.  Antique 
criticism  took  into  account  much  that  we  relegate 
to  the  grammar,  even  now  that  grammar  is  becoming 
more  and  more  unaesthetic.  Shall  we  not  avail  our 
selves  of  the  more  exact  methods  of  these  days  to 
secure  a  more  objective  standard  of  criticism  ?  The 
attempt,  as  has  been  said,  is  dangerous  in  the 
extreme.  The  moral  inferences,  so  to  speak,  which 
have  been  drawn  from  grammatical  peculiarities  in 
languages,  dialects,  periods,  departments,  indi 
viduals,  are  partly  shadowy,  partly  hazardous,  and 
yet  not  only  is  the  problem  fascinating  in  itself,  but 
after  all  it  is  a  fair  problem.  It  may  never  receive 
a  complete  answer.  This  in  the  nature  of  things  is 
impossible,  for  the  elements  are  too  varied,  too 

1  avTap  6  yvfjuxadr)  paKccov  noXvfJLTjTis  ' 


GRAMMAR  AND  AESTHETICS.  137 

subtle.  But  it  is  susceptible  of  an  approximate 
answer,  and  in  time  the  outline  of  a  system  will  be 
laid  down.  Between  the  salient  points  there  will  be 
room  enough  for  the  play  of  aesthetic  fancy,  and 
fine  writers  can  add  arabesque  to  arabesque,  but  the 
structure  itself  will  be  essentially  fixed. 

If  a  better,  a  more  objective  aesthetic  should  be 
the  outcome  of  grammatical  study,  this  would  only 
be  a  completion  of  the  cycle,  for  grammar  began  with 
aesthetic,  as  can  be  shown  historically.  But  to  prove 
this  point  it  is  not  necessary  to  go  back  to  written 
records ;  for,  if  we  wish  to  reproduce  the  past,  it  is 
only  necessary  to  go  down  to  a  lower  stratum,  and 
the  attitude  of  the  uncultured  mind  toward  language 
would  give  ample  confirmation  of  this  position. 
The  artistic  sense  survives  in  the  people,  to  whom, 
and  not  to  the  makers  of  books,  language  ultimately 
belongs.  Doubtless  the  artificial  language  finds 
its  way  among  the  people,  and  what  is  artificial, 
nay,  what  is  individual  in  one  generation  becomes 
popular,  becomes  national  in  another.  Yet  it  must 
be  remembered  that  in  the  main,  indeed  in  almost 
every  fibre,  the  people  owns  the  language,  not  king 
or  queen,  and  in  any  natural  scheme  of  grammar  the 
unsophisticated  classes  are  to  be  consulted.  This 
widens  the  sphere  of  observation  from  the  imperfect 
registry  of  manuscripts  and  the  seclusion  of  the 
study  to  the  living  utterance  and  the  open  air  of 
popular  life ;  and  in  this  larger  field  we  learn  the  im 
mense  importance  of  phonetics.  What  we  analyse 
with  so  much  care,  the  body  of  sound,  is  to  the 
people  as  pronunciation,  the  main  thing ;  and  on  this 
score  every  one  who  has  lived  in  foreign  parts  has  had 


138  GRAMMAR  AND  ESTHETICS. 

mortifying  experiences  to  record.  If  one's  intercourse 
is  limited  to  the  cultured  classes,  to  those  who  have 
much  to  do  with  strangers,  there  is  no  great  difficulty 
about  making  one's  wants  known.  But  it  is  otherwise 
with  the  masses.  With  the  masses  the  pronunciation 
is  the  great  thing.  Inflection  may  be  twisted  and 
syntax  rent  in  sunder  so  long  as  the  color  of  the  sound 
is  preserved.  The  lack  of  a  familiar  gasp  or  a  special 
click,  the  failure  to  reproduce  the  intonation  of  a  sen 
tence,  will  make  the  foreigner  unintelligible  to  the 
people.  Departure  from  the  standard  is  visited  with 
mockery.  It  is  considered  unbeautiful,  it  is  the  viola 
tion  of  a  norm.  Not  that  the  people  is  unobservant 
of  other  defects,  but  of  none  is  it  more  keenly  observ 
ant  than  of  this.  In  this  direction  the  study  of  dialect 
is  destined  to  lead  to  important  results,  and  if  philo- 
logians  lived  more  in  the  world  they  might  make 
valuable  additions  to  the  study  of  language  by  cul 
tivating  the  fields  that  lie  untilled  about  us,  by  noting 
the  criticisms  of  the  people,  and  by  finding  out  the 
sensitive  points  of  the  popular  tongue.  Perhaps 
there  is  less  opportunity  in  this  country  for  such 
observation, because  language  has  been  more  levelled 
here  than  elsewhere,  and  the  process  is  still  going 
on;  and  yet  there  is  opportunity  enough.  The 
advance  of  phonetics  will  enable  us  to  register 
pronunciation  more  exactly,  and  we  shall  not  be 
satisfied  with  such  rude  representations  of  sound  as 
we  find  in  the  current  spelling  of  Yankee,  Southern, 
Western,  or  negro  dialect.  To  him  who  has  ears  to 
hear  and  mind  to  reason  there  is  a  vast  field  open 
in  the  domain  of  every-day  speech.  Omnibus,  street 
car,  railway,  not  a  journey  that  takes  us  out  into  a 


GRAMMAR   AND   ESTHETICS.  139 

new  stream  of  collinguals  but  may  furnish  new 
specimens  for  our  exhibit,  and  the  student  of  lin 
guistic  may  go  on  an  expedition  for  such  a  purpose 
with  as  clear  a  conscience  as  a  mineralogist  or  a 
botanist. 

It  has  just  been  said  that  the  phonetic  or,  if  you 
choose,  the  orthoepic  side  is  that  which  strikes  the 
popular  mind  most,  and  it  might  be  worth  while  to 
examine  early  and  unsophisticated  representations 
of  barbarous  speech  with  a  view  to  ascertaining  the 
truth  of  this  position.  By  '  sophisticated '  here  is 
meant  grammatical ;  and  as  one  who  has  learned 
his  own  language  under  the  pressure  of  grammar 
is  not  a  fair  judge,  the  material  must  be  sought 
in  pre-grammatical  or  extra-grammatical,  not  to 
say,  supra-grammatical  spheres.  So,  for  instance, 
Aristophanes'  representations  of  dialectic  and  bar 
baric  Greek  have  a  philological,  a  grammatical 
interest.  Passing  by  Aristophanes'  specimens  of 
dialectic  Greek  as  involving  too  many  difficult  ques 
tions,  we  turn  to  the  barbaric  Greek,  not  to  the 
couple  of  lines  of  mock-Persian  and  mock-Persian- 
Greek  of  the  coarse  impostor,  Pseudartabas,  in  the 
Acharnians,  but  to  the  representation  of  the  lingo 
of  the  Scythian  archer  in  the  Thesmophoriazusae, 
in  which  the  work  seems  to  be  very  well  done,  and, 
so  far  as  we  can  judge,  quite  on  a  level  with  any 
modern  reproduction  of  the  speech  of  foreigners, 
aided,  as  our  reproduction  is,  in  a  measure,  by 
the  familiar  categories  of  grammar.  And  it  must 
be  remembered  that  there  was  no  such  thing  as 
grammar  proper  in  the  time  of  Aristophanes,  for  he 
himself  made  merry  over  the  categories,  now  most 


140  GRAMMAR  AND  ESTHETICS. 

familiar  to  us,  that  were  suggested  by  the  thinkers 
of  the  time ;  and  false  genders,  false  cases,  to  the  ear 
of  Aristophanes  must  have  been  little  more  than 
mistakes  in  pronunciation;  for  all  the  grammar 
known  to  the  most  cultivated  Athenians  of  that 
time  pertained  to  the  phonetic  side  of  the  language ; 
and  Aristophanes  felt  the  barbarian's  blunders  in 
syntax  not  otherwise  than  he  represents  Socrates 
to  have  felt  the  uncultured  pronunciation  of  Phei- 
dippides  when  he  is  brought  to  him  for  training. 
The  differentiation  belongs  to  a  later  period.  Viewed 
in  this  light,  Aristophanes'  representation  of  bar 
baric  Greek  gains  a  new  interest.  The  wonderful 
reproduction  of  musculature  in  Greek  statues  has 
led  some  to  suppose  that  Greek  anatomical  studies 
were  further  advanced  in  the  time,  say,  of  Pheidias 
than  tradition  would  have  led  us  to  suppose,  so 
admirably  did  the  Greek  divine  the  muscle  under 
the  skin.  In  like  manner,  Aristophanes,  in  his 
representation  of  the  Greek  of  the  Scythian  archer 
or  policeman  of  Athens,  goes  through  every  gram 
matical  category,  as  if  he  were  a  trained  Observer. 
The  barbarian  drops  his  final  consonants,  sim 
plifies  his  diphthongs,  puts  tenues  for  aspiratae, 
evaporates  his  A's,  substitutes  dative  for  accusative, 
and  gets  his  genders  wofully  mixed.  And  with 
more  art  than  many  modern  imitators  of  foreign 
speech,  who  attribute  to  all  Germans  mistakes 
in  English  that  no  German  makes,  Aristophanes 
preserves  here  and  there  a  group  of  correct  Greek. 
But  the  attitude  of  the  ungrammatical  mind  toward 
grammar  is  too  difficult  a  study  to  be  attacked  in 
passing,  and  it  will  be  more  profitable  to  show  by 


GRAMMAR   AND   ESTHETICS.  14! 

some  statements  and  illustrations  the  antique  con 
nection  between  grammar  and  aesthetic,  and  to  give 
some  hints  as  to  a  scientific  restoration  of  their  joint 
action. 

The  great  difficulty,  as  has  already  been  hinted, 
consists  in  drawing  the  line  between  grammar  and 
rhetoric.  The  syntaxis  ornata  of  the  older  grammars 
is  pure  rhetoric.  Grammar  as  a  regulative  art,  and 
as  such  it  was  considered  until  of  late  years,  really 
takes  up  one  side  of  rhetoric — correctness ;  and  if 
there  is  any  overlapping  in  the  following  exhibit, 
let  it  be  forgiven. 

Grammar  rises  after  the  decline  of  literature.  It 
is  originally  retrospective,  except  when  it  has  been 
passed  on  from  nationality  to  nationality  as  the 
grammar  of  the  Romans  from  the  Greek,  and  modern 
grammar  from  Latin,  and  it  is  therefore  associated 
in  this  first  stage  with  interpretations  either  of  an 
earlier  monument  of  literature  or  of  foreign  speech, 
including  dialectic  variation.  Grammatical  study 
is  in  point  of  fact  literary  study,  and  arises  from  the 
necessity  of  expounding  to  later  generations  some 
great  work  that  has  made  its  language  the  norm  for 
the  period  or  for  the  department,  whereas  for  a 
long  time  the  language  of  every-day  life  resists  the 
analysis,  and  one  is  astonished  to  see  how  many 
centuries  of  thought  and  controversy  were  needed 
to  settle  the  categories  that  every  school-child 
knows  after  a  fashion.  This  long  process  of  philo 
sophical  fermentation  is  shown  by  the  nomencla 
ture  of  our  grammar,  some  of  which  was  not  settled 
until  a  period  long  subsequent  to  the  death  of  the 
antique  world,  so  that  the  consciously  grammatical 


142  GRAMMAR   AND   AESTHETICS. 

speech  of  the  cultivated  is  a  strange  resultant  of 
tradition  and  study. 

There  may  have  been,  let  us  grant  that  there  must 
have  been,  a  time  when  every  element  in  such  a 
language  as  the  Greek  had  its  felt  force ;  but  there 
is  no  written  record  of  that  period,  and  ages  before 
our  first  data  the  sharp  lines  had  been  rounded  and 
the  simple  functions  complicated.  To  maintain,  as 
has  been  done,  that  every  people  thinks  something 
not  only  at  every  utterance,  but  at  every  element  of 
that  utterance,  is  going  too  far — certainly  too  far 
for  the  resonance  or '  dingdong'  theory  of  language. 
Out  of  conscious  composition,  according  to  the 
dominant  view,  we  pass  into  a  feeling  of  total  effect 
and  general  relation.  At  any  rate,  this  is  the  condi 
tion  in  which  we  find  language  before  the  grammatical 
period,  and  the  dawning  of  what  we  should  call  gram 
mar  lights  up  first  the  aesthetic  side,  the  musical  side ; 
for  the  music  to  which  the  language  is  set,  otherwise 
called  the  accent,  attracted  the  attention  of  the  Greek 
before  anything  else.  'Acute'  and  '  grave  '  were  old 
in  the  time  of  Plato,  and  it  is  significant  that  the 
first  element  that  the  artistic  Greek  noted  was  the 
last  to  receive  scientific  treatment  at  the  hands  of 
modern  grammarians,  who  had  been  content  to 
repeat  the  pretty  saying  of  the  ancients  that  '  accent 
is  the  life -breath  of  the  word  ',  and  were  very  far  from 
recognizing  the  wide  reach  of  its  influence.  To  the 
same  artistic  side  belongs  the  recognition  of  the 
power  of  the  different  letters — letters — for  the  ancients 
did  not  emancipate  themselves  from  the  external 
symbols,  and  even  modern  philologians  have  not  all 
succeeded  in  keeping  symbol  and  power  apart.  Every 


GRAMMAR   AND  ESTHETICS.  143 

cultivated  Greek,  as  early  as  the  end  of  the  fifth 
century  B.  C.,  knew  of  some  the  divisions  which  are 
still  popularly  made  in  the  'letters',  and  Plato  draws 
his  illustrations  freely  from  this  sphere  as  something 
familiar  to  all  the  personages  of  his  dialogues. 

But  if  we  look  further,  we  shall  find  in  the  heyday 
of  Attic  literature  no  genuine  grammatical  develop 
ment.  'Noun'  and  'verb'  were  used,  it  is  true, 
but  not  in  their  strict  grammatical  sense.  The 
moods  were  appreciated  but  not  defined ;  the  first 
crude  attempt  was  purely  rhetorical.  Cases  were 
unknown  ;  if  the  Scythian  archer  used  dative  for 
accusative,  the  Greek  of  that  time  could  only  feel 
that  he  was  wrong.  Plato  makes  sharp  distinctions 
between  the  tenses — distinctions  which  modern 
grammarians,  at  least  until  of  late  years,  did  not 
take  in ;  he  virtually  draws  a  fine  line  in  the 
Euthyphron1  between  the  participle  as  participle 
and  the  participle  as  adjective ;  but  subtle  as  Plato 
was,  he  could  not  have  formulated  his  propositions 

1  This  is  not  the  place  to  interpret  a  Platonic  passage.  Suf 
fice  it  to  note  that  Plato  is  equal  to  grammatical  distinctions 
that  sorely  puzzle  his  commentators  if  they  are  not  of  a  gram 
matical  turn.  Grote  says  on  the  passage  referred  to  (Euthy 
phron,  10  A-D)  :  '  The  manner  in  which  Socrates  conducts 
this  argument  is  over-subtle.  The  difference  between  the 
meaning  of  (pepfrai  and  (pepopcvov  ecrn  is  not  easy  to  see  ' — 
nor  does  Grote  see  it,  and,  not  seeing  it,  naturally  considers  it 
over-subtle.  Jowett,  being  a  professed  Grecian,  which  Grote 
was  not,  explains  the  passage  thus  :  '  The  next  objection  .  .  . 
is  shipwrecked  on  a  refined  distinction  between  the  state  and 
the  act,  corresponding  respectively  to  the  adjective  (<£i'Xoi>) 
and  the  participle  ((pi\ovp.fvov),  or  rather  perhaps  to  the  parti 
ciple  and  the  verb  ((piXovp-fvov  and  <£iAetrai).'  The  Master  of 
Balliol  can  hardly  be  considered  happy  in  his  alternative. 


144  GRAMMAR  AND   ESTHETICS. 

grammatically.  But  it  is  not  necessary  to  sketch 
the  development  of  technical  grammar,  to  point  out 
what  Aristotle  contributed,  what  the  Stoics,  what 
the  Alexandrians.  It  is  sufficient  for  the  present 
purpose  to  note  that  it  was  soon  divorced  from 
science  and  became  a  purely  regulative  art.  The 
early  observers  who  marked  the  difference  between 
vowel  and  consonant  were  truly  scientific.  Not  so 
those  who  collected  glosses  and  barbarisms  and 
solecisms  for  the  interpretation  of  the  earlier  poets, 
for  the  training  of  youthful  Hellenists.  The  dili 
gence  and  acumen  of  the  long  line  of  grammarians 
are  not  to  be  underrated,  and  yet  we  find  only  here 
and  there  a  mind  that  thinks  a  truly  scientific 
thought  as  to  the  functions  of  grammatical  forms. 
And  so  it  continued  down  to  times  that  are  very 
near  our  own.  Grammar  was  and  is  still  to  many 
the  art  of  reading,  writing,  and  speaking  correctly, 
not  the  exhibition  of  the  structure  and  growth  of 
language. 

As  an  art,  grammar  entered  largely  into  antique 
aesthetic  criticism.  The  ancient  models  were 
studied  with  a  view  to  imitation,  and  the  analysis 
extended  to  every  element  of  discourse.  Nothing 
that  had  been  recognized  as  characteristic  was  over 
looked,  and  no  modern  criticism  can  compare  with 
this  microscopic  dissection.  Unfortunately,  few  but 
professional  philologians  push  their  studies  into  the 
domain  of  the  Greek  and  Roman  rhetoricians,  and 
even  these  are  apt  to  become  impatient  with  what 
must  seem  at  first  to  be  fanciful  detail,  or  at  best  only 
applicable  to  the  forms  of  the  classic  languages.  But 
while  we  may  consider  this  study  tedious  in  itself 


GRAMMAR   AND   ESTHETICS.  145 

and  futile  in  its  aim  as  a  regulative  art,  there  is 
much  to  be  learned  from  the  old  rhetorical  use  of 
grammar  as*  an  organon  of  aesthetic  appreciation. 
The  ancient  rhetorician  took  into  account  phonetics, 
word-formation,  syntax,  periodology,  all  from  a 
purely  subjective  point  of  view.  Now  all  these 
matters  fall  under  the  observation  of  the  scientific 
grammarian,  all  are  subjected  to  rigid  measurement 
and  computation.  We  know  the  proportions  in 
which  the  different  vowel-sounds  appear  in  given 
monuments  of  literature ;  we  know  what  sequences, 
what  combinations  of  sounds  certain  languages  will 
tolerate,  the  emergence  and  the  disappearance  of 
such  and  such  terminations,  the  growth  and  limit  of 
case-use,  tense-use,  the  extent  of  section,  member, 
and  period ;  and  while  it  is  not  proposed  to  make 
a  mathematical  aesthetic  on  the  basis  of  grammar,  it 
may  be  possible  to  remove  some  part  of  criticism 
out  of  the  range  of  mere  sensibility  and  opulent 
phraseology.  A  type  of  the  system  to  which  we 
may  look  forward  in  the  remote  future  is  presented 
by  the  recent  advances  in  the  study  of  antique 
metres.  Before  the  development  of  the  new  system 
of  antique  metres,  or  rather  the  rediscovery  of  the 
old  system,  the  construction  and  recitation  of  lyric 
measures  in  Greek  and  Latin  were  left  very  much 
to  individual  taste  and  feeling.  Whether  a  man 
read  an  ode  of  Horace  or  a  chorus  of  Sophocles 
or  an  epinician  of  Pindar  well  or  ill  was  a  matter 
between  the  reader  and  his  audience,  tf  not  between 
the  reader  and  himself.  There  was  no  standard. 
The  result  was  not  absolutely  satisfactory ;  appre 
ciation  of  the  rhythm  was  confined  to  a  few ;  and 


146  GRAMMAR   AND   AESTHETICS. 

the  admiration  was  conventional,  and  nothing  is 
more  deadening  to  the  sense  of  the  beautiful  than 
conventional  admiration,  from  which,  it  may  be  said 
by  way  of  parenthesis,  the  study  of  the  classics  has 
suffered  more  than  from  all  other  troubles  put 
together.  Now  that  the  great  principles  which  reg 
ulate  the  movement  of  antique  rhythm  are  brought 
within  the  comprehension  of  every  student,  now 
that  we  can  trust  to  the  correcting  finger  as  well  as  to 
the  less  certain  ear,  now  that  we  can  say  digitis  calle- 
mus  et  aure,  the  enjoyment  is  surely  not  less  real,  not 
less  deep,  because  it  is  both  so  much  more  exact 
and  so  much  more  explicable.  Of  course  it  is  not 
maintained  that  any  such  system  can  be  perfected 
for  the  relations  of  grammar  and  literary  art.  Much 
detail  is  yet  unsettled  even  in  metrical  study,  and 
the  problem  before  us  is,  one  might  almost  say, 
infinitely  more  complicated.  Still  the  task  is  not 
hopeless,  and  although  it  has  never  been  approached 
in  a  systematic  way,  partial  results  and  undesigned 
successes  show  what  may  yet  be  accomplished. 

It  has  just  been  said  that  the  ancient  rhetoricians, 
who  were  the  aesthetic  critics  of  antiquity,  went  into 
a  much  more  minute  analysis  of  their  authors  than 
would  be  tolerable  now ;  and  as  the  object  of  this 
paper  is  to  vindicate  minute  grammatical  study  with 
a  view  to  aesthetic  result,  it  may  not  be  considered 
irrelevant  to  call  up  the  grammatical  points  which 
are  to  be  found  in  one  of  the  various  critical  writings 
of  the  famous  rhetorical  theorist  Dionysius  of  Hali- 
carnassus.  This  great  critic  was  in  some  respects  an 
unfair  and  pedantic  judge,  yet  his  writings  deserve 
all  the  close  study  that  they  have  received  of  late 


GRAMMAR   AND   ESTHETICS.  147 

years.1  Minute  he  is,  but  not  arid,  and  there  are 
passages  in  his  rhetorical  works  that  would  not 
be  unworthy  of  Mr.  Pater  or  Mr.  Symonds. 

In  his  admiration  of  Demosthenes,  Dionysius 
seems  to  have  gone  to  the  extent  of  underrating  all 
other  Greek  writers  in  order  to  heighten  the  stature 
of  his  idol,  who  in  his  judgment  overtopped  them 
all,  avoided  all  their  defects,  and  combined  in  cul 
mination  all  their  merits.  Yet  he  has  keen  insight, 
just  tact,  and  in  the  merely  sensuous  side  of  his 
criticism,  that  which  pertains  to  rhythm  and  color, 
we  must  still  be  content  to  learn  of  him.  Now 
Dionysius'  judgment  of  Thucydides  is  thought  to 
be  singularly  harsh,  and  it  is  adduced  here  only  to 
show  first  what  the  categories  are  that  antique 
criticism  thought  it  right  to  bring  in,  and  then  to 
ask  whether  some  of  these  categories  are  not  such 
as  may  be  satisfactorily  filled  by  the  processes  of 
modern  grammar.  Not  that  it  will  be  thought 
necessary  to  give  an  analysis  of  the  long  essay 
which  Dionysius  has  devoted  to  Thucydides.  He 
himself  has  gathered  up  in  a  shorter  tract  what  he 
considers  the  peculiarities  of  the  style  of  the  great 
historian,  and  from  a  summary  of  this  we  may  cull 
the  grammatical  elements. 

Professor  Usener  has  recently  shown  in  his  edition  of  the 
irepl  fj.tfj,f)(re<os  that  the  literary  judgments  of  the  famous  critic, 
for  whom,  by  the  way,  he  has  no  better  name  than  magistellus, 
go  back  to  an  earlier  and  better  time.  See  also  Professor 
Nettleship  in  the  Journal  of  Philology,  Vol.  XVIII  (1890),  No. 
36,  p.  263  foil.  This  enhances  the  value  of  the  specimens  that 
have  been  given  in  the  text,  because  it  is  an  indication  that 
the  importance  of  what  we  call  grammar  for  style  was  recog 
nized  before  the  age  of  pedantry. — B.  L.  G. 


148  GRAMMAR   AND   ESTHETICS. 

According  to  Dionysius,  Thucydides  went  delib- 
eratejy  to  work  at  a  new  style  of  his  own,  one  that 
was  neither  pure  prose  nor  absolute  poetry,  yet 
blended  out  of  the  two.  It  must  be  noticed  that  the 
ancient  critic  writes  of  Thucydides  as  many  modern 
critics  have  written  of  Carlyle — not  as  though  his 
style  were  the  man,  the  expression  of  his  individu 
ality,  but  a  mechanical  contrivance,  with  a  deliberate 
view  to  novelty  of  effect.  How  far  the  ancient 
critic  and  the  modern  are  right  this  is  not  the  place 
to  inquire,  although  Carlyle  almost  makes  con 
fession  of  conscious  mannerism  in  his  Reminis 
cences,  one  of  his  best  or  at  all  events  one  of  his 
most  characteristic  productions.  By  the  way,  some 
one  with  a  turn  for  computation  has  counted  the 
parentheses  in  the  Reminiscences,  and  it  is  much 
to  be  wished  that  the  same  observer  had  watched 
the  rise  and  growth  and  general  norm  of  paren 
theses  in  Carlyle,  so  that  this  paper  might  have 
received  an  additional  illustration  from  a  familiar 
region.  Was  parenthesis  a  designed  peculiarity  of 
Carlyle,  which  afterwards  passed  over  into  blood 
and  bone  ?  Were  the  characteristics  of  Thucydides 
just  so  many  evidences  of  his  artistic  purpose? 
Here  Dionysius  is  wrong.  To  attribute  full  con 
sciousness  to  the  greatest  writers  would  be  a 
capital  mistake,  and  the  value  of  the  study  dis 
cussed  in  this  paper  would  be  much  diminished  by 
such  an  assumption.  But  Dionysius,  it  must  be  re 
membered,  looked  upon  his  author  with  the  eyes  of 
a  rhetorician  who  is  in  search  of  a  norm  for  prac 
tice.  This  study  has  to  do  only  with  the  appreci 
ation,  not  with  the  creation,  of  works  of  literary  art. 


GRAMMAR   AND   AESTHETICS.  149 

Dionysius,  then,  treats  Thucydides  as  an  inno 
vator,  not  by  virtue  of  a  native  necessity,  but  in  the 
interest  of  striking  effects.  As  to  his  phraseology,  his 
selection  of  words,  Thucydides  uses  tropical  expres 
sions  instead  of  literal,  glossary  vocables  instead  of 
current  words,  archaisms  instead  of  the  common  and 
familiar  language  of  his  contemporaries — another 
charge,  by  the  way,  that  is  freely  made  against 
innovators  of  our  day,  both  in  prose  and  poetry. 
True,  it  is  one  that  does  not  come  fully  within  the 
scope  of  grammar,  but  the  next  set  of  peculiarities  is 
strictly  grammatical.  As  some  scholars  have  gone 
so  far  as  to  call  English  a  grammarless  language, 
so  some  have  claimed  a  similar  character  for  Thucy 
dides,  or  at  any  rate  have  said  that  Thucydides  is 
not  to  be  judged  by  the  rules  of  ordinary  grammar, 
and  so  can  never  be  called  ungrammatical  because 
he  is  not  holden  of  grammar.  Dionysius  goes  fur 
ther  and  makes  him  antigrammatical,  as  one  who 
deliberately  sets  himself  to  disappoint  the  gram 
matical  sense  of  his  reader.  As  there  was  no  tech 
nical  grammar  in  Thucydides'  time,  this  designed 
discord  must  have  been  brought  about  by  feeling 
rather  than  by  reasoning;  and  while  Thucydides 
might  have  understood  his  critic  when  he  says  that 
the  historian  loves  to  expand  a  word  into  a  sen 
tence,  and  again  to  contract  a  sentence  into  a  word, 
he  would  not  have  understood  so  well,  if  at  all, 
when  the  critic  says  that  he  makes  verbs  out  of 
nouns  and  nouns  out  of  verbs ;  shifts  actives  and 
passives ;  exchanges  singulars  and  plurals ;  blends 
feminines  with  masculines,  masculines  with  femi- 
nines,  both  with  neuters,  to  the  utter  confusion  of 


I5O  GRAMMAR   AND   AESTHETICS. 

natural  sequence;  deals  in  daring  constructions 
according  to  the  sense;  is  no  respecter  of  gram 
matical  persons  ;  is  lavish  in  the  exchange  of  tenses, 
and  behaves  generally  in  a  manner  that  in  a  lesser 
author  would  be  called  solecistic.  He  indulges  in 
abstracts  for  concretes,  concretes  for  abstracts,  and, 
like  Carlyle,  lets  parenthesis  in  as  a  flood,  so  that 
his  sentences  become  twisted  and  hard  to  disen 
tangle.  The  other  strictures  on  Thucydidean  style 
we  pass  by — on  the  build  of  the  sentence,  the 
equalization  of  the  members,  the  jingle  of  the 
clauses,  the  play  on  words,  the  balanced  anti 
theses  ;  but  what  is  important  for  us  to  notice  has 
been  verified — the  large  part  that  grammar,  pure 
and  simple,  plays  in  this  characteristic.  Now 
Thucydides  is  confessedly  an  extreme,  as  much 
an  extreme  as  Carlyle,  and  we  must  expect  to 
find  every  peculiarity  exaggerated  in  him  ;  but  it 
is  by  these  extremes  that  we  learn  the  outline. 
The  insight  into  finer  distinctions  comes  only 
after  multiplied  observations.  Hence  a  notorious 
case  has  been  selected.  Of  course,  it  is  not  supposed 
for  a  moment  that  even  in  modern  literary  criti 
cism  grammatical  peculiarities  have  not  been  noted, 
but  they  have  not  been  systematically  studied,  and 
there  has  been  little  serious  attempt  to  get  at  the 
moral,  the  aesthetic  value.  This  value,  recognized 
by  the  ancient  critics  in  a  general  way,  is  suscep 
tible  of  more  exact  ascertainment, — thanks  to  the 
exhaustive  methods  in  vogue, — and  such  an  ascer 
tainment  is  the  highest  as  it  is  the  most  refined 
result  of  grammatical  study.  Dionysius  has  else 
where,  as,  for  instance,  in  a  remarkable  and  valu- 


GRAMMAR   AND   AESTHETICS.  l$l 

able  treatise  on  '  Composition ', — that  is,  the  arrange 
ment  of  words  in  the  sentence, — gone  largely  into 
the  euphonic  side  of  literary  art,  the  sequence  of 
sounds  and  the  artistic  effect  of  the  combination  of 
the  phonetic  elements.  This,  too,  is  grammatical, 
or  at  all  events  borders  on  the  sphere  of  grammar, 
and  with  the  advance  of  phonetics  we  may  expect 
here  also  sharper  formulae  and  clearer  results.  The 
symbolism  of  sound  is,  it  is  true,  a  most  treacherous 
subject  of  investigation,  and,  looking  at  the  fan 
tastic  tricks  that  have  been  played  with  the  corres 
pondence  of  sense  and  sound  in  ancient  as  well  as 
in  modern  times,  it  is  well  to  be  cautious.  The 
permeation  of  the  '  lightning  letter '  i  (pron.  ee)t  the 
hissing  hate  of  the  repeated  s,  the  dull  obstinacy  of 
the  dental,  and  the  loving  lapse  of  the  liquid, — all 
this  symbolism  has  had  a  fascination  for  minds  of  a 
certain  order  from  the  beginning ;  and  those  who 
are  intolerant  of  such  fancies  in  others  fall  into 
similar  fancies  themselves.  A  man  who  will  sneer 
at  the  symbolism  of  Homeric  verses  as  expounded 
by  the  old  interpreters  will  not  hesitate  to  recognize 
moral  and  aesthetic  elements  in  the  vowel-register 
and  consonant-range  in  various  dialects  of  the  same 
language.  How  far  fancy  can  be  excluded  and 
science  be  introduced  is  a  problem  which  the 
advance  of  phonetics  must  solve.  It  may  be  the 
dream  of  a  pedant  to  suppose  that  the  aesthetic 
appreciation  of  an  author  as  an  artist  can  be  fur 
thered  by  the  tabulation  of  his  vowels  and  his 
consonants  ;  and  yet,  inasmuch  as  quite  as  subtle 
an  element,  the  sufferance  of  the  hiatus,  has  done 
good  service  as  a  criterion  of  genuineness,  and  to  a 


152  GRAMMAR   AND  AESTHETICS. 

certain  extent  as  a  criterion  of  style,  it  is  not  well  to 
reject  with  scorn  the  possibility  of  a  successful 
application  of  these  delicate  tests.  Physical  science 
has  of  late  years  in  all  its  departments  made  mar 
vellous  advances  in  the  invention  of  instruments  of 
precision.  Everything  is  weighed,  counted,  regis 
tered,  to  the  nicest  exactitude;  but  weighing, 
counting,  registering,  all  signify  something.  Shall 
grammatical  weighing,  counting,  registering  signify 
nothing  ?  Leave  the  largest  possible  area  for  con 
vention.  If  there  is  but  one  word  to  express  an 
idea,  the  individual  taste  must  accept  that  word, 
whatever  its  phonetics ;  but  is  there  not  a  margin 
of  choice  which  is  sufficiently  susceptible  of  men 
suration  to  be  characteristic?  May  not  phonetics 
come  in  here,  even  in  a  language  apparently  so 
careless  in  this  respect  as  the  English  ?  The  love 
of  variation  is  a  marked  natural  peculiarity  of  Eng 
lish  style ;  it  was  loudly  proclaimed  by  the  trans 
lators  of  the  Authorized  Version.  Do  we  not  find 
the  same  principle  at  work  in  the  phonetics  of  our 
literature,  our  written  art  ?  Poets  have  occasionally 
noticed  some  points.  So  Coleridge  somewhere 
remarks  on  the  disagreeable  effect  of  blended  asso 
nance  and  consonance — such  a  sequence  of  rhymes, 
for  instance,  as  rose,  grown,  blows,  cone,  being 
offensive  to  the  ear  by  the  want  of  contrast.1  But 

1  In  his  '  Science  of  English  Verse  ',  which  is  a  contribution 
to  the  phonetic  and  musical  side  of  style,  the  late  Mr.  Sidney 
Lanier  has  laid  down  as  one  of  the  laws  of  rhyme  :  'Avoid 
neighboring  rhymes  which  are  very  nearly  alike  in  tone-color. 
For  example,  if  two  lines  rhyme  with  'name  '  and  '  fame  ',  do 
not  have  the  two  next  lines  rhyming  in  '  vain  '  and  '  stain  ',  or 
similar  near  shades  of  vowel-color.  The  result  is  like  two 


GRAMMAR   AND  ESTHETICS.  153 

poets  do  not  often  make  their  combinations  scien 
tifically;  they  group  sounds  as  florists  group 
flowers,  by  the  complementary  sense,  and  leave  the 
scientific  appreciation  to  others.  Professor  Syl 
vester's  essay  on  the  '  Laws  of  Verse '  shows  the 
fruitfulness  of  this  method  as  applied  to  poetry. 
For  artistic  prose  little  has  been  done  either  on  the 
appreciative  or  on  the  regulative  side. 

Periodology  belongs  to  the  music  of  style  as  well 
as  the  sequence  and  combination  of  sounds.  This 
also  falls  within  the  domain  of  grammar,  at  least  in 
its  elements.  The  importance  of  periodology  in  the 
estimate  of  antique  composition  has  of  late  years 
been  fully  recognized,  thanks  to  a  renewed  study 
of  the  ancient  authorities.  The  symmetrical  struc 
ture  of  the  oratorical  period,  the  proportion  of  its 
members,  the  distribution  of  its  feet,  all  these  matters 
now  enter  into  characteristics  of  style,  and  become 
important  for  questions  of  individual  development  as 
well  as  of  genuineness ;  and  it  is  not  necessary  to 
insist  on  the  self-evident  fact  that  in  this  region  of 
aesthetics  minute  statistics  and  careful  measurement 
are  not  only  possible  but  are  susceptible  of  valuable 
application. 

The  term  syntax  in  its  modern  use  is  so  vague  that 
it  runs  over  freely  from  the  grammatical  to  the  rhetori 
cal  side  of  the  study  of  language,  and  yet  even  in  the 
narrowest  sense  in  which  it  can  be  taken,  the  theory 
of  construction,  it  may  have  an  aesthetic  value.  It 
is  not  a  matter  of  indifference  as  to  the  aesthetic 

contiguous  shades  of  pink  in  a  dress  :  one  of  the  rhymes  will 
seem  faded.'  Elementary  and  obvious  as  such  a  rule  may 
seem,  it  must  have  been  new  in  Coleridge's  time. 


154  GRAMMAR   AND  ESTHETICS. 

effect  of  composition  what  the  dominant  construc 
tions  are1 — and  there  is  yet  open  a  wide  field  of 
observation  in  this  direction.  Sporadic  remarks 
are  found  in  grammars  and  commentaries,  but  much 
more  remains  to  be  found  out  and  brought  into 
tangible  shape.  For  great  departments  and  great 
periods  of  literature  some  of  these  observations  are 
of  more  importance  than  pages  of  exclamatory 
admiration.  We  contrast  the  epos  of  Greece  with 
the  epos  of  Rome.  One  grammatical  difference 
sums  the  whole  matter  up.  No  historical  present 
in  the  one,  while  the  historical  present  abounds  in 
the  other,  and  nothing  more  is  needed  for  him  who 
appreciates  the  range  of  grammatical  phenomena. 
The  wide  sphere  of  the  dative  in  Latin  poetry  is 
another  such  significant  fact.  Now  as  the  examina 
tion  of  the  usages  of  different  periods  and  different 
authors  becomes  more  exact,  more  detailed,  we 
shall  find  a  potent  meaning  in  much  that  seems 
to  us  indifferent  now.2  The  writer's  consciousness 

1 1  venture  to  refer  to  a  recent  study  of  mine  in  the  Ameri 
can  Journal  of  Philology  for  1888,  IX  137  foil.,  on  the  Stylistic 
Effect  of  the  Greek  Participle.— B.  L.  G. 

2 '  La  plus  belle  tache  que  puisse  se  proposer  la  critique,  c'est 
de  repenser  avec  clarte  ce  que  la  genie  a  concu  plus  ou  moins 
confusement,  et,  semblable  a  Mercure,  de  se  faire  pres  des 
hommes  Pinterprete  des  dieux.  Voila  pourquoi  je  ne  me  laisse 
point  arrSter  ou  troubler  par  1' objection  commune  :  "  Vous 
pretez  aux  poetes  des  intentions  qu'ils  n'ont  pas  cues."  Qu'im- 
porte  qu'ils  ne  les  aieht  pas  cues,  si  elles  sont  dans  leurs 
ceuvres  ?  Tout  ce  que  1'etude  peut  y  decouvrir,  la  critique  a  le 
droit  de  le  developper  avecune  abondance,une  largeurd'analyse 
vraiment  illirrfitee  ;  elle  ne  risquera  guere  de  s'egarer  si  elle  est 
sympathique  et  respectueuse  et  elle  ne  doit  craindre  en  aucuii 
cas  d'epuiser  le  sujet ',  etc.  (Paul  Stapfer,  Shakespeare  et 


GRAMMAR   AND  ESTHETICS.  155 

would  make  the  study  of  less  interest,  of  less 
value  to  us  who  follow  the  appreciative  rather 
than  the  regulative  side.  But  in  this  unreasoned 
choice,  if  the  expression  be  not  an  absurdity,  the 
characteristic  often  lies.  When  we  compare  two 
authors,  we  are  apt  to  look  chiefly  at  the  range  of 
thought  and  the  vocabulary.  Periodology  is  con 
sidered  only  in  its  extremes  ;  euphony  is  not  brought 
to  any  scientific  test;  and  syntax  is  not  studied 
except  in  its  monstrosities.  Ask  an  ordinary 
student, '  What  is  the  difference  between  the  style  of 
Addison  and  that  of  Johnson  ?  '  Would  the  answer 
be  anything  like  the  one  given  by  the  shrewd 
observer  who  says :  *  One  of  the  chief  points  of 
contrast  in  their  style  lies,  I  apprehend,  in  the  easy 
and  natural  recurrence  in  the  former  of  the  verb, 
and  the  artificial  preponderance  given  in  the  latter 
to  the  noun.  Since  Dr.  Johnson's  time  the  substan 
tive  has  been  gaining  ground ;  the  infinitive  mood, 
the  gerund,  and  the  compound  participle  have  been 
in  the  same  proportion  suppressed  in  many  works 
of  which  the  composition  is  highly  elaborate.  As 
far  as  unstudied  writings  may  be  expressed  in  set 
phrase,  the  usurpation  has  extended  even  to  these'? 
This  is  a  grammatical  observation  of  wide  reach  and 
capable  of  ample  illustration ;  yet  those  who  are 
outside  of  grammatical  study  would  see  in  the  collec 
tion  and  registration  of  such  facts  nothing  but  the 

I'antiquite,  i.  316.)  The  same  line  of  defence  applies  to 
grammatical  analysis.  Sophocles  could  not  have  given  a  reason 
for  his  use  of  the  negatives ;  and  Mr.  Bryant's  grammatical 
explanation  of  shall  and  will  in  his  Thanatopsis  seemed  to 
me  as  faulty,  when  I  read  it,  as  the  word  Thanatopsis  itself. 


156  GRAMMAR   AND   ESTHETICS. 

senseless  toil  of  the  pedant.  Of  course  much 
depends  on  the  texture  of  the  language ;  statistics 
that  would  be  valuable  in  Greek  would  be  worthless 
in  English, and  it  requires  a  certain  clearness  of  vision 
to  see  what  are  true  analogies.  Yet  with  just 
limitations  it  is  true  that  the  statistics  of  construction 
do  serve  to  fix  the  characteristics  of  style  not  only 
in  periods  and  departments,  but  also  in  individuals. 
Given,  for  instance,  a  certain  conditional  combina 
tion  in  Greek ;  determine  the  frequency  of  its 
occurrence  in  comparison  with  another  conditional 
in  various  departments  and  in  a  series  of  authors, 
and  it  will  be  found  that  in  that  one  category  we 
have  a  sharp  index  of  character.  The  tragic  poets 
will  employ  the  severer  conditional  in  larger  propor 
tion  than  prose  writers,  and  as  compared  with  one 
another  the  nearer  they  approach  the  standard  of 
every-day  life  the  smaller  the  proportion  becomes.1 
Comic  poetry  stands  in  this  respect  on  the  same 
level  with  prose,  and  prose  in  emergency  rises  to 
the  level  of  tragedy.  It  is  true  that  there  is  more 
exciting  reading  than  a  table  of  decimals,  but  those 
decimals  have  after  all  a  meaning ;  and  if  a  lodgment 
has  been  gained  for  the  thought  that  all  the  minute 
grammatical  research  of  the  present  day  may  be 
made  available,  and  is  to  be  made  available,  for 
literary  criticism,  for  aesthetic  appreciation,  some 
thing  has  been  done  in  vindication  of  the  much- 
abused  fellowship  of  grammarians — the  '  corner- 

1  An  allusion  to  a  laborious  investigation,  the  results  of 
which  were  published  in  the  Transactions  of  the  American 
Philological  Association  for  1876. — B.  L.  G. 


GRAMMAR   AND  ESTHETICS.  IS/ 

hummers  ',  as  the  Greek  epigrammatist  l  contemp 
tuously  calls  them.  That  it  is  possible  to  forget 
the  end  in  the  means,  that  there  are  those  who  never 
go  beyond  the  collection  of  facts,  is  most  true  ;  but 
there  are  others,  and  those  not  a  few,  who  while 
they  put  aside  the  mere  dilettantism  of  aesthetic 
phrase-making  are  not  insensible  of  the  total  effect, 
and  while  they  use  the  measuring-rod  are  not 
blind  to  the  chambers  of  imagery  —  to  cherubim 
and  palm-trees  and  lions.2  Music  and  architecture 
rest  on  mathematics  ;  and  no  one  denies  to  the 
votaries  of  music  and  architecture  the  due  appre 
ciation  of  their  arts  because  of  counterpoint, 
because  of  studies  as  to  the  strength  of  material. 
The  very  love  of  art  forbids  the  neglect  of  any 
detail,  and  the  quest  of  some  principle,  the  effort  to 
get  exact  expression  for  every  manifestation  of 
spiritual  life,  is  not  unworthy  of  the  highest  intel 
lectual  faculties.  Wherever  there  is  true  art  there 
is  law,  however  it  may  hide  itself  under  the  facts, 
and  this  recognition  of  law  lifts  the  study  of  literary 
art  out  of  the  domain  of  elegant  trifling  and  carries 
it  into  a  region  where  art  and  science  meet. 


TO   (T(})lv  KO.I  TO  Cr<f>(pV  KCU  TO  fUV  T)de  TO  VIV. 

8  Ezek.  ch.  xli. 


Citerarg 

0taMe0 


THE  LEGEND  OF  VENUS 


THE  LEGEND  OF  VENUS.1 

The  literary  world  has  its  fashions  as  well  as  the 
world  that  reads  Le  Follet  and  the  Journal  des 
Modes,  but  the  changing  fashions  of  literature  are 
often  more  unaccountable  than  the  expansion  and 
contraction  of  skirts  and  the  rise  and  fall  of  the  top 
knot.  A  simple  creed  refers  the  long  worship  of 
St.  Crinoline  and  the  marvellous  development  of  the 
chignon  to  the  Empress  of  the  French ;  but  why 
should  bookworms  of  a  certain  period  all  turn  to 
the  same  kind  of  moth  ?  Successful  example 
cannot  always  be  assigned  as  the  cause.  True,  we 
can  understand  how  Scott  made  the  historical  novel 
popular,  how  Byron  established  the  Satanic  school, 
how  De  Quincey  is  responsible  for  all  the  hashish- 
eaters  who  have  inflicted  their  stupid  dreams  on  a 
sleepy  public.  We  can  understand  how  any  de 
cided  impulse  given  by  a  man  of  great  intellect  and 
learning  may  be  felt  for  generations;  how  Wolf 
and  Niebuhr  are  working  on  even  now  in  the  per 
sons  of  their  admirers  and  imitators.  Otfried 
M tiller,  for  instance,  made  a  lucky  hit  with  his  first 
book — a  monograph  on  ^Egina — and  thereby  set 

Ji.  Tannhauser,  or  the  Battle  of  the  Bards.  A  Poem.  By 
Neville  Temple  and  Edgar  Trevor.  American  Edition.  Mo 
bile  :  S.  H.  Goetzel  &  Co.  1863. 

2.  Laus  Veiieris  and  other  Poems  and  Ballads.  By  Al 
gernon  Charles  Swinburne.  New  York :  Carleton.  1866. 


1 62  THE   LEGEND   OF    VENUS. 

every  apprentice  philologian  to  writing  a  special 
treatise  on  some  city  or  island,  Greek  or  barbaric, 
until  the  literary  world  became  as  weary  as  any 
'  Mariana  of  the  moated  grange ',  of  such  treatises 
as  the  '  History  and  Topography  of  the  unidentified 
Island  of  Krokyleia ',  and  the  '  Position  of  the  Ger- 
gesenes  in  the  Development  of  the  World-religion  '. 
All  this  is  easily  explained  on  the  imitative  or 
emulative  principle.  But  sometimes  the  subjects 
require  long  preparation  and  the  careful  working  out 
of  details,  so  that  we  must  suppose  the  inception  at 
least  to  be  independent.  Translations  of  Homer 
cannot  be  tossed  up  so  quickly  as  the  editor  of  the 
Fry  ing-Pan  of  Freedom,  tosses  up  his  daily  omelet 
of  politics.  A  long  stretch  separates  Pope  from 
Chapman,  a  considerable  interval  sunders  Cowper 
from  Pope;  but  within  the  last  few  years  any 
number  of  worthy  English  amateurs  have  tried  their 
hands  on  the  difficult  task,  and  every  new  bulletin 
brings  an  advertisement  of  a  new  rendering  of  the 
great  epic ; — this  one  in  the  metre  of  the  original,  that 
one  in  the  Spenserian  stanza,  yet  another  in  a  spick- 
and-span  new  measure,  and  a  fourth  in  a  traditional 
blank  verse.  The  literary  world  is  Homer-struck ; 
and  we  should  not  be  surprised  at  seeing  the  dead 
walls  of  our  suburbs  filled  with  rival  placards, 
'  Everybody  reads  Worsley's  Odyssey ',  and '  Every 
body  takes  Hobensack's  Liver  Pills  ';  '  Herschel's 
Hexametrical  Homer '  and  '  Radway's  Ready  Re 
lief;  Lord  Derby  and  Dean  Alford  in  the  close 
neighborhood  of 'Mrs.  Winslow's  Soothing  Syrup' 
and  '  Hoofland's  German  Bitters  '.  To  us  it  seems 
that  a  revived  belief,  once  almost  prostrate,  in  the 


THE  LEGEND   OF    VENUS.  163 

personality  of  Homer,  has  renewed  the  artistic 
interest  in  the  unique  poems  which  bear  his  name. 
Viewed  as  a  pack-thread  that  ties  together  a  series 
of  old  ballads,  or  even  as  an  ingenious  compiler, 
Homer's  person  is  not  an  image  to  call  forth  a 
passionate  love.  But  as  the  real  author  of  the  great 
double  picture  of  Greek  heroic  life,  he  appeals  more 
loudly  than  ever  to  his  English  admirers,  as  one 
whose  very  soul  has  been  saved  from  the  dese 
crating  hands  of  the  rationalists.  The  English  must 
have  a  person,  and  hence  they  prefer  ^Eschylus  and 
even  Euripides  to  the  less  salient  Sophocles ;  while 
the  Germans  care  more  for  the  art  and  less  for  the 
artist.  Whether  this  be  the  true  explanation  or  not, 
it  is  well  to  remember  that  a  difficulty  is  not  solved 
by  paraphrasing  the  statement  of  it,  as  those  philo 
sophers  do  who  tell  us  that  the  law  of  develop 
ment  postulates  the  simultaneous  occupation  of 
several  minds  with  the  same  subject ;  that  if  Le- 
verrier  and  Adams  had  not  discovered  Neptune,  it 
would  have  been  discovered  a  week  afterwards 
without  them  ;  that  the  steamship  and  the  loco 
motive  would  have  been  evolved  independently  of 
Fulton  and  Stephenson. 

But  the  present  popularity  of  the  legend  of  Venus 
does  not  belong  to  the  wholly  inexplicable  class. 
In  its  mediaeval  form  the  story  has  a  charm  which 
its  native  Germany  has  never  been  backward  to 
appreciate ;  and  the  only  wonder  is  that  it  was  not 
sooner  taken  up  by  English  poets.  To  this  intrinsic 
interest  must  be  added  the  intense  excitement 
which  was  called  forth  by  Wagner's  celebrated 
opera  '  Tannhauser';  a  work  which  was  intended  to 


164  THE   LEGEND    OF    VENUS. 

establish  the  '  music  of  the  future  ',  and  which  has 
succeeded  in  making  a  prodigious  hubbub  among  the 
musicians  of  the  present.  A  poem  with  the  same 
title,  which  appeared  in  England  a  few  years  ago 
under  the  assumed  names  of  Neville  Temple  and 
Edward  Trevor,  had  a  great  success  in  the  Southern 
States,  and  the  edition  before  us  is  a  Confederate 
one ;  and  now  Swinburne's  Laus  Veneris  is  selling 
by  thousands,  and  the  American  publisher  repre 
sents  his  presses  and  himself  as  wellnigh  worn  out 
by  the  applications  of  booksellers,  who  in  their  turn 
are  hard  pressed  by  a  host  of  readers  as  madly  in 
love  with  Swinburne  as  Tannhauser  himself  with 
Dame  Venus. 

There  is  a  story  afloat  that  when  Gustave  Dore 
was  asked  to  illustrate  Tennyson's  poems,  he  in 
quired,  with  all  the  superciliousness  of  which  the 
French  language  is  capable  :  Who  then  is  this  Ten 
nyson  ?  We  ask  ourselves  a  similar  question,  but 
in  a  far  better  spirit:  Who  then  is  this  Venus?  'A 
question  to  be  asked '  but  not  so  easy  to  answer. 
It  is  not  the  egg  of  Columbus,  but  the  egg  of  Eros 
that  is  to  be  chipped  before  the  problem  can  be 
solved  ;  and  to  give  a  detailed  account  of  the  origin 
and  history  of  this  multiform  deity  would  carry  us 
back  to  theogonies  which  are  dainty  neither  in  the 
reading  nor  in  the  telling,  and  carry  us  down  into 
rites  unmentionable  and  revolting.  What  we  pur 
pose  to  do  is  to  set  forth  as  well  as  we  may  in  the 
compass  of  a  few  pages,  the  double  aspect  of  the 
mysterious  goddess  of  life  and  death,  of  love  and 
hate,  of  pleasure  and  pain,  of  things  supernal  and 
things  infernal;  to  show  how  in  one  form  or 


THE   LEGEND    OF    VENUS.  165 

another  the  symbolism  of  immortality  is  retained ; 
how  the  same  personages  in  different  disguises 
reappear  as  the  heroes  of  like  adventures,  although 
a  vast  distance  separates  Baal  and  Tannhauser, 
Ashera  and  the  '  kept  goddess '  of  the  Thuringian 
Horsel.1  Of  course  when  we  speak  of '  the  same 
personages  '  we  do  not  mean  absolute  identity ; 
we  only  mean  personifications  of  the  same  general 
idea,  modified  by  religion,  by  nationality,  by 
climate  ;  and  we  disclaim  expressly  any  ambitious 
attempt  to  reduce  to  a  last  analysis  one  of  the  most 
composite  of  mythical  formations.2 

The  original  figure  of  Venus  is  of  Oriental  and 
specifically  of  Semitic  growth  ;  a  goddess  of  nature 
and  yet  not  a  goddess  only,  for  the  embodiment  of 

1  Une  divinite  aux  camelias,  et  pour  ainsi  dire  une  deesse 
entretenue.  Heine.  Les  Dieux  en  Exil.  Revue  des  deux 
Mondes,  ier  Avril,  1853. 

2As  I  said  in  the  preface,  these  papers  are  republished  sub 
stantially  as  they  were  written,  and  nothing  can  be  further  from 
my  mind  than  the  attempt  to  restudy  these  studies,  and  this  is 
especially  true  of  the  '  Legend  of  Venus ',  for  which  all  the 
stores  of  learning  then  accessible  to  me  were  faithfully  ran 
sacked.  In  the  light  of  to-day  those  stores  will  seem  very 
meagre,  but  some  of  the  combinations  may  still  have  some  in 
terest.  One  of  my  former  students,  Dr.  W.  M.  Arnolt,  has  had 
the  kindness  to  look  up  the  recent  literature  in  the  Semitic  field, 
and  so  that  part  of  the  article  will  not  be  hopelessly  out  of  date  ; 
and  I  have  added  a  few  notes  picked  up  in  my  reading. 
The  paper  sins  greatly,  I  know,  in  the  multiplication  of  proper 
names  and  of  foot-notes,  and  though  I  rebelled  against  the 
criticism  of  these  particulars  at  the  time — it  was  a  woman's 
criticism — I  have  never  in  a  would-be  popular  article  indulged 
so  much  in  proper  names  from  that  day  to  this,  and  have  tried, 
when  sowing  my  foot-notes,  to  sow  them  in  obedience  to 
Comma's  precept,  '  with  the  hand  and  not  with  the  whole 
sack.'— B.  L.  G. 


1 66  THE  LEGEND    OF   VENUS. 

nature  must  present  a  being  complete  in  itself. 
Male  Venuses  were  known  before  '  Our  Mutual 
Friend ' :  the  Romans  had  a  bearded  deity  of  that 
name,1  the  Greeks  an  Aphroditos2  as  well  as  an 
Aphrodite,  the  Philistines  a  Dagon  as  well  as  a 
Baaltis.  In  the  statues  of  Dionysus  or  Bacchus 
there  is  an  evident  blending  of  the  male  and  the 
female  character;3  and  the  well-known  son  of 
Hermes  and  Aphrodite  is  but  a  late  expression  of 
the  same  symbolism.4  Still  the  prevailing  idea  was 
that  of  a  goddess  ;  and  the  first  form  that  we  have 
to  notice  is  Ashera  or  Wife5 — for  such  seems  to  be 
the  meaning  of  the  word — the  spouse  of  her  lord 
Baal.  Ashera,  the  goddess  of  nature,  the  germi 
nating  earth, — in  Babylon  called  Mylitta6  or  Ge- 
netrix ;  in  Phrygia,  Cybele  or  Magna  Mater, — held 
her  court  in  the  open  air.  Groves  were  her  first 
temples,  her  altars  the  high  places.  Sacred  to  her 

1  Schol.  in  II.  ii.  820.  On  a  bearded  Aphrodite  in  Cyprus, 
sometimes  identified  with  Herakles,  see  Dethier  in  Academy, 
April  n,  1874. — B.  L.  G.  Also  Perrot  and  Chipiez,  Art  in 
Phoenicia  (Eng.tr.),  ii.  151.— W.  M.  A. 

2Macrobius,  Sat.  iii.  8. 

3Muller,  Archaologie  der  Kunst,  p.  594  fgg.  Ariadne  is 
his  Kora,  his  Persephone  ;  and  the  heads  are  often  confounded. 

4  On  the  early  Hermaphroditi  see  Preller,  Griech.  Myth,  i.3 
419-20.     On  the  later,  Mtiller,  s.  627. 

5  Fiirst,  Hebraisches  Worterbuch  s.  v.  (1867).      PHl^N  accord 
ing  to  most  Assyriologists  is  connected  with  Assyrian  asirtu 
'  she  who  brings  salvation,  prosperity  ',  « phallus  '.    F.  Delitzsch 
explains  it  as  equal  to  « sanctuary  ',  '  temple ',  whilst  there  be 
those  who  cling  to  'tree  ',  'stake  '.     See  Collins,  Proceedings 
of  Soc.  Bibl.  Archaeol.,  June  4,  1889,  vol.  xi,  pp.  291-303,  and 
Eschrader,  Zeitschrift  fiir  Assyriologie,  iii.  367.— W.  M.  A. 

6Mylitta=rn^fD  Duncker :  Geschichte  des  Alterthums,  i.4 
203 — Fiirst,  s.  v.  'Ashtoreth. 


THE   LEGEND    OF    VENUS.  l6/ 

was  the  mighty  terebinth  with  its  unfading  leaf  and 
the  evergreen  cypress.  The  pomegranate,  emblem 
of  fertility,  was  hers,  with  its  dense  array  of  seeds ; 
the  pomegranate  which  is  the  miscalled  apple  of 
discord,  and  which  we  find  on  the  ephod  of  Aaron 
(Ex.  xxviii.  33)  and  on  the  'chapiters  '  of  the  two 
strange  pillars1  made  by  Hiram  of  Tyre  (i  K.  vii. 
1 8,  20)  as  well  as  on  the  cheeks  of  Sulamith  (Cant. 
iv.  3).  Goats  and  rams  were  her  victims,  doves 
were  sacred  to  her,  and  fish,  with  their  multitudi 
nous  progeny.  Indeed  she  is  none  other  than  the 
Derceto  of  Askalon,  who  was  the  mermaid  of  the 
period,  as  Dagon  was  the  merman.  The  sea  is 
hers ;  for  water,  which  the  wise  son  of  Javan, 
Thales,  made  the  first  principle  of  things,  is  sacred 
to  Ashera;  and  when  Hannibal,  whose  name  is 
derived  from  Ashera's  consort  Baal,3  wished  to  take 
the  most  solemn  of  oaths,  he  swore  to  Philip  '  in 
the  sight  of  rivers  and  meadows  and  waters  '.  But 
of  this  Ashera,  though  frequently  mentioned  in  the 
Hebrew  Scriptures,  our  version  of  the  Bible  makes 
no  account;  and  she  has  disappeared  in  the ' groves  ' 
which  were  sacred  to  her,  and  the  rude  images 
reared  in  her  honor. 

1  These  pillars  re-appear  in  the  pillars  of  Melkarth,  the  pil 
lars  of  Melkarth  in  the  pillars  of  Hercules,  and  these  in  the 
Spanish  pillar-dollar  and,  according  to  one  theory,  in  our 
dollar-mark  ($),  in  which  form  they  receive  an  adoration  nothing 
short  of  Phoenician  idolatry. 

8  Bunker  i.4  264.  Diodor.  Sic.  ii.  4.  Derceto  was  the 
mother  of  Semiramis,  and  made  away  with  the  father  of  her 
child,  as  is  the  wont  of  such  deities  when  they  go  astray. 

3  Polybius  vii.  9.  Hannibal  =  Baal  is  gracious,  as  Johannes 
=Jehovah  is  gracious.  See  Fiirst,  s.  v.  Jehohanan.  So  Han 
nibal  might  be  translated  into  Jacks9n. 


1 68  THE   LEGEND    OF    VENUS. 

Far  more  familiar  is  the  name  of  the  divinity  with 
whom  Ashera  was  afterwards  confounded :  Astarte 
or  'Ashtoreth  the  abomination  of  the  Zidonians ' 
(2  K.  xxiii.  13).  Her  name,  too,  signifies  Consort.1 
She  is  the  queen  of  heaven,  and  heaven's  king  was 
Moloch — not  the  mild  lord  Baal,  the  old  easy-tem 
pered  Uranus,  but  the  devouring  fire,  the  scorching 
heat  of  midsummer.  As  Moloch  was  the  sun,  so 
was  Astarte  the  moon — the  chaste  goddess,  whose 
priestesses  and  whose  victims  were  virgins,  whose 
temples  no  married  woman  durst  enter.  But  as  the 
dualism  of  all  the  old  religions  endeavors  to  pass 
over  or  perhaps  to  pass  back  into  a  higher  unity,  so 
we  find  Baal  blended  with  Moloch,  Ashera  with 
Astarte.2 

The  Baal  of  Tyre,  the  Helios  of  the  Greeks,  was 
Melkarth,  the  king  of  the  city,  the  god  of  the  sun — 
the  wandering  god,  who  set  up  at  far-off  Cadiz  the 
pillars  which  the  malapert  Greeks  claimed  for  their 
own  hero  Hercules, — the  roving  Baal  whose  priests 
Elijah  mocked  on  Carmel,  saying  (i  K.  xviii.  27): 
( Cry  aloud,  for  he  is  a  god  ;  either  he  is  talking,  or 
pursuing,  or  he  is  in  a  journey ',  or  peradventure  he 
sleepeth  and  must  be  awaked.'  But  it  was  not  good 
for  this  new  Baal,  this  sun-god,  to  be  alone,  and 
Astarte  the  moon-goddess  must  be  won  for  him. 
As  a  wandering  goddess,  Dido 3  was  her  name ; 

1  Furst,  s.  v.    <  Mooned  Ashtaroth, 

Heaven's  queen  and  mother  both.' — Milton. 

2According  to  Professor  Haupt,  as  cited  by  C.  P.  Tiele  in  a 
paper  read  at  Leyden  in  1885,  Asherah  and  Ashtoreth  are 
feminine  forms  of  Asur,  Istar  being  for  Itsar. — W.  M.  A. 

3  Fiirst,  s.  v.  T1/J  in  confirmation  of  Etym.  Magn.  Tr^avqTic;. 
Comp.  Duncker  i.4  272  (1867).  So  too  Paul  Schroder, 


THE   LEGEND   OF   VENUS.  l6g 

and  Baal-Melkarth,  the  knight  errant  of  day,  sought 
the  lady  errant  of  night  far  into  the  west,  into  the 
land  of  sunset  and  of  darkness.  There  found,  she 
yielded  to  Melkarth,  and  men  called  her  no  more 
Dido  or  the  wanderer,  but  Anna  or  Hanna — *  the 
gracious  one ';  or,  if  we  interpret  it  into  the  lan 
guage  of  our  ancestors,  Huldah,  a  German  goddess, 
whose  analogy  with  Venus  we  shall  consider  before 
long.  In  view  of  all  this  it  is  no  fancy  that  the  cold 
moonshine  of  Astarte  rests  on  Vergil's  Dido ;  that 
there  is  an  unreality  about  the  whole  conception, 
which  shows  a  want  of  faith  in  the  poet  himself;  for 
Vergil  was  a  bookish  man  and  better  informed  of 
the  real  purport  of  Dido l  than  some  of  his  commen 
tators,  who  have  gravely  urged  against  him  the 
charge  of  anachronism. 

The  struggle  between  the  friendly  and  the  hostile 
powers  of  nature,  which  was  solved  in  Tyre  by  the 
union  of  Baal  and  Moloch  in  the  person  of  Melkarth, 
was  symbolized  in  the  myth  of  Adon.  Adona  or 
lord,  (in  Greek,  Adonis),  is  the  bloom  of  nature ; 
by  the  heat  of  summer,  the  floods  and  storms  of 
autumn,  the  fair  youth  is  done  to  death.  When  the 
mountain  stream  that  empties  near  Byblus  (Gebal) 
into  the  sea  was  swollen  by  the  rains  of  autumn 

Phoeniz.  Sprache,  p.  126,  but  the  Assyrian  analogy  dadu=TH 
(Ipwf )  points  to  '  beloved  '  as  the  meaning  of  David  and  Dido, 
and  accords  also  with  the  signification  of  Anna  and  Hanna. 
— W.  M.  A. 

1  Not  a  little  remarkable  is  the  verse  : 
Hic[Iopas]  caniterrantemlunam  solisquelabores. — Aen.  1.742. 

9  Theocritus  has  the  original  form  in  the  verse  : 

Xoup',  "A§o>i>  ayanr]T€t  KOI  cs  xa>iPOVTas  «0tK€u. —  xv.  149. 


I/O  THE  LEGEND    OF   VENUS. 

and  its  waters  ran  red  with  clay,  then  they  said  that 
Adon  had  been  slain  on  Lebanon  by  the  wild  boar 
of  Moloch,  sacred  by  reason  of  his  furious  strength 
to  the  fiery  god.  Seven  days  did  the  mourning  for 
Adon  last.  His  wooden  image  was  washed  and 
anointed  and  laid  on  a  bier,  and  the  women  of 
Byblus  lamented  his  death,  crying  :  Ailanu !  Ailanu ! 
( Woe  is  us  !  Woe  is  us  /)  This  is  the  Adon  that  was 
called  Tammuz,  of  whom  Ezekiel  speaks  when  he 
says  (viii.  14) :  Then  he  brought  me  to  the  door  of 
the  gate  of  the  Lord's  house,  which  was  toward  the 
north,  and  behold  there  sat  women  weeping  for 
Tammuz.1  With  the  fresh  green  of  spring  the  god 
awoke,  and  the  joy  at  his  resurrection  was  as  wild 
and  extravagant  as  the  grief  at  his  death.2  This 
myth,  which  holds  in  solution  so  many  strange 
elements,  in  which  the  ebb  and  flow  of  vegetative 
life  mingle  with  the  dim  Oceanus,  the  all-begirding 
river  of  eternity,  passed  over  into  Greece,  gaining 
in  beauty  of  expression  without  losing  in  depth  of 
significance. 

The  mistress  of  Adonis,  the  Grecian  Aphrodite,3 

1  In  vain  the  Tyrian  maids  their  wounded  Thammuz  mourn. 

— Milton,  Hymn  on  the  Nativity. 

2  Duncker    i.4    274,    Kenrick    308-9,    Preller,    Griechische 
Mythologie,  i.4  219. 

8 The  ordinary  etymology  which  goes  back  to  d<f)p6s  'foam', 
and  which  is  still  supported  by  such  authority  as  Pott,  is  not 
satisfactory,  although  Benfey  (Wurzellex.  i.  586)  cites  a  similar 
myth  from  the  Hindootheogony.  Compare  alsoMaury,  Histoire 
des  religions  de  la  Grece  antique,  i.  117,  note  3.  Benfey  divides 
thus:  *A0po5-  (ablative)  Irr)  'she  that  hath  gone  forth  from 
the  foam  ',  or,  as  our  Tennysonian  friends  would  say,  '  spume- 
born  '.  The  jesting  Greek  etymology  from  cxjypocrvvi]  '  want 
of  sense ',  Eur.  Tro.  989-90,  is  not  so  good  as  the  British  sailor's 


THE   LEGEND    OF   VENUS.  I/ 1 

was  not  of  Grecian  growth.  The  daughter  of  sky 
and  water,  she  came  from  beyond  the  seas,  from 
Cyprus,  where  the  sly  Phoenician  dwelt — from 
Cyprian  Paphos,  the  home  of  Ashera  and  of  her 
favorite  Kinyras  the  man  of  the  cithern,1  from 
Cyprian  Amathus,  which  is  in  the  Phoenician  tongue 
Hamath.  She  came  from  Crete,  where  Europa 
landed,  borne  thither  by  Zeus  in  the  form  of  a  bull, 
an  animal  sacred  to  the  king  of  heaven.  Indeed 
all  Crete  is  full  of  Phoenician  idolatry.  Europa2 
herself  is  Astarte,  the  moon,  but  so  is  Pasiphae,  the 
wife  of  Minos.  Minos  is  Moloch,  but  so  is  the 
Minotaur ;  and  Talus,  the  famous  brazen  policeman, 
who  made  the  entire  coast  of  the  island  his  beat  and 
pressed  poor  shipwrecked  mariners  to  his  glowing 

'  half-rotted '  (London  Society,  Aug.  1866),  which  we  respect 
fully  recommend  to  Mr.  Swinburne  and  the  admirers  of  his 
medlar  Muse  (1867). 

Leo  Meyer  divides  'A^po-Srn;  and  assumes  l/di  'shine',  von 
Schroeder  V  di  in  8ipos,  Aphrodite  =IG  abhradltS.  or  abhraditi 
'cloud-flitter',  one  of  the  Apsaras  or  water-nymphs  and  air- 
spirits  (see  Am.  Journal  of  Philology  viii.  511).  Hommel's 
identification  of  Aphrodite  with  Ashtoret,  first  propounded,  to 
my  knowledge,  in  the  Academy,  Feb.  25,  1881,  has  found  much 
favor.  On  the  etymology  T)S'fly',  see  O.  Keller,  Berliner 
Phil.  Wochenschrift,  1887,  p.  525,  who  cites  Brandis,  Mttnz- 
wesen  von  Vorderasien,  s.  263,  &  propoi>  of  a  coin  of  Paphos 
with  a  dove  flying.  Burton  in  his  commentary  on  Os  Lusiadas 
i,  8  makes  Aphrodite  Albanian  Afeldita  'dawn',  'morning 
star'.— B.  L.  G. 

1  Kinnor,  the  harp.  See  Preller  i.4  360-369,  and  compare  that 
other  favorite  of  Aphrodite,  Anchises — 

TTtoXerr'  tvQa  KOI  tvQa  dtairpva-iov  KiQaplfav' 

— Hymn,  in  Ven.  v.  80. 

8  Preller   i.4  372-3,  and   on   this  whole  Cretan  section,  ii.3 


1/2  THE   LEGEND    OF    VENUS. 

breast  until  they  melted,  is  the  familiar  image  of 
Moloch  to  which  the  idolatrous  Israelites  offered 
their  children.  The  genealogy  is  very  complex,  and 
after  a  while  every  god  becomes  his  own  father  and 
son,  step-father  and  step-son  ;  every  goddess  her  own 
mother  and  grand-mother,  daughter  and  grand 
daughter.  Dido  was  bad  enough  ;  she  was  her  own 
sister,  and  the  parvulus  ^Eneas  she  wanted  would 
have  been  her  grandson  ;  but  the  Cretan  labyrinth 
of  relations  is  even  worse,  and  the  '  Cretians '  evid 
ently  deserved  the  stigma  of  '  slow  bellies '  for  not 
getting  their  myths  into  proper  trim.  It  is  a  droll 
island  at  best.  The  Cretans,  or  as  the  Bible  calls 
them  'the  Cherethites',1  were  fervent  Molochians, 
and  used  to  furnish  king  David  with  his  body-guard. 
What  ails  the  modern  Candiotes  that  they  must 
needs  break  off  this  time-honored  connexion  with 
the  East,  refuse  to  become  good  Moslems  and  to 
send  their  contingent  to  the  Ottoman  army?  From 
this  Crete  with  its  '  evil  beasts  '  came  Phaedra,  '  the 
shining  one  ',  the  sister  of  Ariadne,  and  if  not  Venus 
herself,  yet  a  living  witness  of  the  power  of  Venus 
— Phaedra  whose  guilty  love  for  Hippolytus  is  the 
type  of  numberless  stories  in  which  the  Oriental 
woman  woos  the  Occidental  man.  We  recognize  it 
in  Hercules  and  Omphale,  in  Jason  and  Medea,  in 
Ulysses,  now  with  Circe,  now  with  Calypso.  It  goes 
back  to  the  ancient  tale  of  Ninus  and  Semiramis.2 

1  e.  g.  2  Sam.  viii.  18  ;  xv.  18. 

8  Semiramis  is  a  Venus  Victrix  with  a  vengeance.  See 
Duncker,  ii.4  7  fgg.  Her  name  according  to  Diodor.  Sic.  ii. 
4,  signifies  '  dove  ';  her  history  is  rather '  the  rage  of  the  vulture  ' 
than  'the  love  of  the  turtle  '  (1867).  See  an  interesting  paper 
on  Semiramis  by  Dr.  Cyrus  Adler,  Johns  Hopkins  University 


THE   LEGEND    OF   VENUS.  1/3 

It  glimmers  through  the  narrative  of  Samson  and 
Delilah,  and  comes  out  in  the  full  light  of  historic 
times,  as  if  to  give  actuality  to  the  idea,  in  Antony  and 
Cleopatra.  The  whole  dome  of  poetry  is  resonant 
with  the  accents  of  this  fateful  love.  You  hear  it 
in  the  magic  gardens  of  Armida ;  it  lingers  in  the 
song  of  Vivien.  True,  in  most  instances  the  human 
element  overbears  all  others.  To  the  Greek,  Helen 
was  a  weak  and  treacherous  woman,  who  fell  in 
love  with  Paris  for  his  handsome  face  and  fine 
clothes ;  and  in  no  wise  the  goddess  of  the  moon, 
although  she  smote  Stesichorus  with  blindness  for 
repeating  the  old  scandal  about  her  escapade  with 
the  son  of  Priam.1  Witness,  for  instance,  how  purely 
human  she  is  in  the  fourth  book  of  the  Odyssey,  in 
which  she  receives  Telemachus  with  all  the  compo 
sure  of  a  high-bred  woman,  listens  to  the  conversa 
tion  with  an  easy  grace,  sheds  her  melodious  tear  to 
the  memory  of  the  brave  chieftains  who  fought  for 
her,  mixes  a  sleeping  draught  with  all  the  skill  of 
Mrs.  Gamp,  tells  her  little  story  about  that  interview 
with  Ulysses  during  the  war,  and  like  a  good  house 
keeper  sees  to  it  that  Telemachus's  bed  is  properly 
blanketed  before  '  she  of  the  sweeping  train,  the 
divine  among  women '  takes  her  place  by  the  side 
of  the  husband  whom  she  had  betrayed.  And  then 
that  little  story  !  How  natural  it  is  !  How  artfully 
she  conciliates  the  good-will  of  her  hearers  by  tell 
ing  them  that  her  heart  yearned  for  home  even  in 
those  wicked  days,  and  how  she  mourned  over  the 

Circulars  No.  55  (Jan.  1887),  with  Professor  Haupt's  confirma 
tion  of  Diodorus'  etymology. — B.  L.  G. 
1  Preller  ii.3  109. 


174  THE  LEGEND    OF    VENUS. 

fatal  mischief-making  of  Aphrodite,  who  had  taken 
her  away  from  her  fatherland,  her  child,  her  husband 
— her  husband  '  who  lacked  nothing  in  sense  or  in 
person  '.  Well  said,  madam  Helen !  Your  humanity 
is  fully  vindicated.  But  though  thus  humanized  in 
the  person  of  Helen,  Aphrodite  has  a  deep  signifi 
cance  even  in  Greek  mythology;  and  indeed  the 
Greek  worship  of  Aphrodite  is  no  less  profound, 
while  it  is  infinitely  more  graceful,  than  the  Oriental. 
The  Greek  received  nothing  from  the  East  that  he 
did  not  make  doubly  his  own  by  the  beauty  with 
which  he  invested  it1 — mater iam  super ab at  opus — 
and  the  Aphrodite  Urania  is  as  far  above  the  Oriental 
personification  of  the  conceptive  principle  of  nature 
as  the  graceful  image  of  Venus  issuing  from  the 
shell — fairest  of  bivalves — excels  the  clumsy  mer 
man  Dagon,  whose  hands  and  feet  were  cut  off  upon 
the  threshold  of  his  temple  when  he  lay  a  prostrate 
deformity  before  the  ark  of  the  Lord  at  Ashdod. 
We  grant  that  some  local  features  of  the  worship  of 
Aphrodite  were  beyond  redemption.  No  religious 
consecration  can  palliate  in  our  eyes  the  sacrifices 
of  those  handmaidens  of  Aphrodite,  the  Bayaderes 
of  Corinth,  any  more  than  the  gross  debaucheries 
which  made  the  language  employed  by  the  Old 
Testament  prophets  concerning  the  infidelity  of 
Judah  and  Israel  but  too  appropriate  in  a  double 
sense.2  However,  these  abuses  were  confined  to 
certain  districts,  and  it  was  only  when  the  Hetaerse, 

1  Plato,  Epinomis,  987  E,  o  n  nfp  av  E\\rjves  ftapftdpav  na- 
paXiifitoai)  KO\\IOV  TOVTO  €i£  T6\os  airfpyd£ovTai. 

2  Compare  the  extended  allegory  in  Ezekiel,  ch.  xxiii.,  and 
Swinburne's  Aholibah. 


THE   LEGEND    OF   VENUS.  175 

in  the  decline  of  Greece,  made  Aphrodite  their  lady 
patroness  and  sat  as  models  for  statues  of  the  deity, 
which  were  to  serve  at  the  same  time  as  advertise 
ments  of  their  own  charms,  it  was  only  then  that  the 
service  of  the  goddess  became  wholly  sensual, — 
only  then  that  the  representation  of  Aphrodite  in 
plastic  art  became  coarse  and  vulgar.  Yet  the 
healthier  tradition  never  became  wholly  extinct,  and 
while  the  Medicean  Venus,  in  spite  of  all  her 
merely  corporeal  charms,  is  little  better  than  a 
Phryne  prepared  to  be  surprised,  the  Venus  Victrix 
of  Milo  '  stands  in  the  full  glory  of  her  regal  beauty, 
opulent  as  nature  herself,  tender  as  true  love  itself, 
thoughtful  as  if  musing  on  the  life  to  come,  and  yet 
proud  as  the  mistress  and  mother  of  gods  and  men. 
Aeneadum  genetrix,  hominum  divomque  voluptas. 

The  oriental  myth  of  Adonis,  so  closely  con 
nected  with  the  worship  of  Aphrodite,  found  ready 
entrance  among  the  imaginative  Greeks.  All  re 
ligions  that  celebrate  the  life  of  earth  couple 
unmeasured  joy  at  the  revival  of  nature  with 
unmeasured  sorrow  at  the  approach  of  winter  ;  and 
it  is  not  unlikely  that  the  eastern  story  was  grafted 
on  a  Greek  stock.  From  Sappho  and  Praxilla  to 
Theocritus  and  Bion,2  the  love  of  Aphrodite  for  the 
beautiful  youth,  his  untimely  end,  and  the  grief  of 
the  goddess  at  his  death,  formed  a  fruitful  theme  of 
poetry;  but  though  here  as  elsewhere  the  human 
elements  come  prominently  into  the  foreground,  the 

1  In  the  Louvre.      Everybody  remembers  Clive  Newcome's 
ecstasies    (The  Newcomes,  ch.  xxii.). 

2  Sappho  :  Paus.  ix.  29,  3 ;  Praxilla :  Bergk  P.  L.4  iii.  566 ; 
Theocr.  Idyll,  xv.  ;  Bion,  Idyll,  i. 


1/6  THE  LEGEND    OF   VENUS. 

symbolical  meaning  is  hardly  veiled  at  all.  Ac 
cording  to  the  familiar  legend,  Adonis  was  doomed 
to  stay  six  months  below  in  the  cold  arms  of  Per 
sephone  ;  six  months  he  was  permitted  to  remain 
in  the  warm  embrace  of  Aphrodite ;  '  as  the  seed 
remaineth  six  months  in  the  ground  from  the  time 
when  it  was  sown ;  and  six  months  Aphrodite  hath 
him,  to  wit,  the  well-tempered  air.' 1  The  death  and 
the  resurrection  of  the  vegetative  principle  were 
plainly  set  forth  in  the  '  gardens  of  Adonis ',  the 
little  wicker  baskets  in  which  the  Greek  women 
used  to  sow  seeds  of  rapid  germination,  and  which 
they  threw  into  the  water  when  Adonis  went  down 
into  the  lower  world.  To  this  lower  world  the  love 
of  Aphrodite  followed  him,  and  in  her  grief  for  her 
beloved  the  character  of  the  joyous  goddess  is 
changed ;  she  puts  on  mourning,  veils  her  face  and 
descends  into  the  tomb.  Nay,  she  herself  becomes 
a  second  Persephone ;  just  as  in  Italy  the  goddess 
of  birth  is  the  goddess  of  death,  as  Lucina  and 
Libitina  are  one.  Thus  the  wonderful  series  of 
contrasted  yet  kindred  ideas  is  complete — pain  in 
its  strange  union  with  pleasure,2  death  hand-in- 
hand  with  life,3  the  mortal  paired  with  immortality. 
But  the  love-affairs  of  Aphrodite  are  not  always 
so  serious  as  her  passion  for  Adonis ;  and  Anchises 
presents  the  other  and  the  more  sunshiny  side.  He 
is  a  more  fortunate  Adonis ;  and,  if  it  were  not  too 

1  Schol.  Theocr.  iii.  48. 

2  Plato,  Phaedo  60  B. 

8  The  Lamia  side  of  the  mythology  was  present  to  Coleridge 
when  he  wrote — 

The  nightmare  Life-in-Death  was  she 

Who  thicks  men's  blood  with  cold.— Ancient  Mariner. 


THE  LEGEND    OF    VENUS. 


irreverent,  we  might  call  him  the  Bottom  of  the 
Greek  Midsummer  Night's  Dream.  As  Oberon 
made  Titania  fall  in  love  with  the  weaver,  so  Zeus 
himself  put  forth  his  power  to  mortify  golden 
Aphrodite  ;l  and  if  the  Greek  Bottom  has  not'  an 
ass's  head,  the  candor  of  his  animal  nature  reminds 
us  forcibly  of  his  English  analogon.  Perhaps, 
however,  this  is  all  prejudice,  and  we  may  as  well 
frankly  acknowledge  that  our  conception  of  pater 
Anchises  has  always  been  grotesque.  To  carry  or 
to  be  carried  pick-a-pack  is  graceful  neither  in  the 
carrier  nor  in  the  carried  ;  and  we  cannot  conceive 
Anchises  otherwise  than  mounted  on  the  shoulders 
of  pious  .^Eneas,  with  a  pad  under  him  to  make  his 
old  bones  comfortable.  As  Vergil  describes  him, 
the  old  gentleman  was  little  more  than  a  respect 
able  mummy  ;  but  even  in  the  prime  of  his  youth 
and  beauty  '  strolling  backwards  and  forwards  and 
loudly  a-sounding  his  cithern  ',  he  is  rather  amusing 
than  heroic,  if  we  may  trust  the  charmingly  naive 
report  in  the  Homeric  Hymn  on  Aphrodite.  At 
first  the  minstrel  of  Ida,  like  the  minstrel  Tann- 
hauser,2  is  willing  to  die  if  he  may  gain  the  love  of 
his  fair  one  ;  but  after  he  has  gained  it,  he  begs 
most  piteously  that  he  may  not  have  to  pay  the 
usual  penalty  for  his  happiness.  For  the  lovers  of 
the  ancient  she-divinities  seem  to  have  run  no 
little  risk  ;  and  Anchises,  who,  according  to  one 

1  Hymn,  in  Venerem,  v.  45. 

2Anchises  :   @ov\oifj.r)v  <€v  eTreira,  yvvai  tiKv 


(rrjs  evvijs  tVi/Say  8vvat  So/xoi/  "Ai'Sos  euro). 

w.  154-5. 
Tanhuser  :  solde  ich  vor  ir  ligen  tot, 

ich  mehte  ir  niht  vermiden. 


1/8  THE   LEGEND    OF    VENUS. 

conjecture,  held  a  fief  of  the  Assyrian  empire, 
knew  too  much  about  Semiramis.  Semiramis,  as  we 
have  seen  in  passing,  another  form  of  the  Ashera- 
Astarte  of  the  Phoenicians  and  the  Dido-Anna  of 
the  Carthaginians,  had  filled  her  land  with  funeral 
mounds  of  her  paramours ;  and  Anchises,  a  cautious 
fellow,  who  would  have  demanded  guaranties  of 
Catharine  the  Second,  did  not  emulate  their  fate 
nor  yet  that  of  poor  shrivelled  Tithonus  the  hus 
band  of  the  blooming  Eos  (Aurora).1  So  he  prays 
as  he  covers  his  fair  face  with  his  blankets : 

But  I  beseech  and  entreat  thee  by  Jupiter,  Lord  of  the  ^Egis, 
Do  not  permit  me  to  live  among  men  as  a  ghost  and  a  shadow ; 
Nay,  but  have  pity  on  me,  for  I  know  that  the  life  of  the  mortal 
Whoso  shareth  the  couch  of  immortal  goddesses,  pineth. 

vv.  188-91. 

This  Aphrodite,  the  celestial  mistress  of  Anchises, 
came  to  Rome  and  found  that  she  must  submit  to  a 
change  of  name.  Here  she  was  called  Venus,2  as 
Athena  was  called  Minerva  or  the  goddess  of 
thought,  Hermes,  Mercurius  or  the  god  of  gain, 
and  Demeter  (mother  earth)  Ceres  the  goddess  of 

1  Compare  Nimrod's  reply  to  Istar  in  the  sixth  tablet  of  the 
Nimrod    Epos.      'This   speech   is  a  scathing   reproach   from 
Izdubar  to  Istar,  a  complete    survey  of   her   excesses,  and   a 
refusal  to  accede  to  her  blandishments.'    See  Dr.  Cyrus  Adler's 
paper  cited  above. — B.  L.  G. 

2  The  old  etymology  from  venire  ('to  come  ')  quia  ad  o mites 
venit>  is  nonsense.    Grimm  suggested  (Deutsche  Mythologie, 
i.  413)  a  comparison  of  (g)  Venus  with  Goth,  gino,  A.  S.  cwen, 
Gr.  yvvr)  (1867).     Bre'al  derives  Venus  from  Sks.  van  '  to  love'. 
In  the  present  attitude  of  etymological  science  it  is  well  to 
cherish  as  profound  a  distrust  of  the  etymology  as  of  the  god 
dess  herself.— B.  L.  G. 


THE   LEGEND    OF    VENUS.  1/9 

growth,  to  the  great  detriment  of  the  varied  signi 
ficance  of  their  original  titles.  For  while  the  Greek 
and  Roman  nationalities  have  a  common  stock  of 
religious  ideas ;  while  there  is  a  general  analogy 
between  the  deities  of  Greece  and  Rome,  and  many 
of  their  religious  rites  were  the  same,  still  the  differ 
ence  of  development  is  marked.1  The  genuine 
Roman  Pantheon  lacks  the  human  and  artistic 
interest  which  attaches  itself  to  the  undying 
forms  of  the  Greek  divinities.  The  gods  of  the 
Romans  did  not  marry  nor  beget  children  ;  they 
did  not  move  among  mortals,  nor  did  they  need 
nectar.  Most  of  them  are  tiresome  abstractions  : 
personifications  of  natural  processes,  of  mechanical 
actions,  of  social  institutions,  nay,  of  material 
objects,  for  everything  here  below  has  its  genius  in 
the  unseen  world.  There  are  spirits  of  the  forest, 
the  furnace,  the  door,  the  hinge,  the  threshold.  In 
fact,  some  of  these  abstractions,  tame  as  they  seem, 
were  among  the  oldest  and  most  revered  of  the 
Roman  deities,  such  as  Terminus  the  god  of  the 
landmark,  Concordia  the  goddess  of  one-minded- 
ness,  and  above  all  Janus,  god  of  the  beginning. 
But  as  the  Romans  became  better  acquainted  with 
the  Greeks,  the  Greek  deities  were  naturalized,  and 
as  they  were  made  free  of  the  city,  they  were 
received  into  the  gentes  of  the  existing  gods. 
Kronos  was  called  Saturnus,  the  god  of  sowing; 
Artemis  was  turned  into  Diana.  Hera,  Our  Lady 
of  the  full-orbed  eye,  is  still  in  schoolboy  parlance 
the  'ox-eyed  venerable  Juno',  and  Aphrodite  is 

1  This  exhibit  follows  Mommsen  closely,  Rom.  Gesch.  B.  i. 
K.  12. 


180  THE   LEGEND    OF    VENUS. 

permanently  Venus.  The  original  Italian  Venus  is 
said  to  have  been  a  goddess  of  the  gardens,  and  so 
in  one  aspect  equivalent  to  Flora,  goddess  of 
flowers.  Aphrodite  might  have  put  up  with 
Flora,  but  she  could  never  have  liked  being  called 
Venus,  and  must  have  curled  her  dainty  nose  when 
she  heard  her  new  name  used  by  that  vulgar  Cam- 
panian  poet  Naevius,  as  a  synonym  for  pot-herbs.1 
And  for  our  part  we  candidly  acknowledge  that  we 
sympathize  with  the  teacher  of  Peisistratos  Caxton 
when  he  cries  out :  '  Und  Du  !  and  dou  Aphrodite ; 
dou  whose  bert  de  seasons  velcomed  !  dou  who 
didst  put  Atonis  into  a  coffer  and  den  did  durn  him 
into  an  anemone ;  dou  to  be  called  Venus  by  dat 
snivel-nosed  little  Master  Budderfield !  Venus 
who  presided  over  Baumgartens  and  funerals  and 
nasty  tinking  sewers  !  Venus  Cloacina  ! — O,  mem 
Gott !  Come  here,  Master  Budderfield  ;  I  must  a 
flog  you  for  dat ;  I  must  indeed,  little  boy  ! '  But 
if  Venus  be  really  a  goddess  of  vegetation,  we  find 
the  same  element  in  the  homelier  Italian  as  in  the 
bewitching  Greek  conception.  Here  too  she  is 
the  divinity  of  the  life-giving  earth,  or  rather  of  the 
fructifying  moisture  that  courses  through  the  veins 
of  everything  that  has  life ;  her  grandest  emblem 
the  sea,  her  nearest,  the  tidal  flow  of  our  own  blood. 
As  Aphrodite  descending  to  Hades  became  a 
Persephone,  so  the  Roman  Venus  Libitina  is  a 
goddess  of  death  also.  All  that  is  born  must  die 
to  rise  again,  and  like  Mother  Earth,  like  Cybele, 
she  has  the  keys  of  the  nether  world.  To  the 
common  people  of  Rome  then,  as  to  the  learned 

1  Festus,  s.  v.  coquum. 


THE   LEGEND    OF    VENUS.  l8l 

now,  the  name  Persephone1  conveyed  no  satis 
factory  idea ;  and  so  by  the  alchemy  of  the  vulgar 
tongue  it  was  transmuted  into  Proserpina,  the  god 
dess  of  the  forth-creeping  plant,  fit  daughter  of 
Ceres,  the  goddess  of  growth,  and  readily  blended 
with  the  floral  divinity  of  Venus. 

After  the  establishment  of  Christianity,  Venus 
lingered  for  a  long  time  in  Italy,  and  her  image  was 
strangely  wrought  into  no  less  a  personage  than 
the  Virgin  Mother.  As  Venus  Marina  she  was 
confounded  with  the  Stella  Maris  ;  and  many  of  the 
pictures  of  the  Madonna — the  Madonna  with  the 
moon  and  stars,  the  Madonna  with  the  fish,  the 
Madonna  called  la  belle  jardiniere — remind  us  by 
their  attributes  of  the  heathen  Queen  of  Heaven, 
although  those  attributes  can  likewise  be  accounted 
for  by  Christian  symbolism.2  Of  course,  apart 

1  IIfpo-€(f)6vr]  for    i&fpfffcfrovTj,  the  death-bringer,  is  not  quite 
satisfactory.     The  original  obscurity  is  indicated  by  the  great 
variety    of    forms — among  others    4>ep(re</>ftrTa — which   might 
mean  the  dove-bearer.    There  was  a  statue  of  Uemeter  at  Phi- 
galeia  with  a  dove  in  her  hand,  the  dove  being  sacred  to  Per 
sephone  also.     Compare  Preller,  who  says  correctly  that  most 
of  these  ancient  etymologies  are  mere  puns  (1867).    According 
to  Gustav  Meyer,  Gr.    Gr.2  §15   -<£ao-(ra   in   <I>epo-e</>ao-ora   is   a 
participle  from  the  same  radical  as  -$01/77 — B.  L.  G. 

2  The  Madonna  with  the  moon  and  stars,  by  Rev.  xii.  i;  La 
belle  jardiniere  by  the  Song  of  Solomon  ;  and  a  volume  might 
be  written  on  the  fish  as  a  heathen  and  Christian  symbol.     See 
the  commentators  on  Herod,  i.  24.     The  fish  on  the  tombs  of 
the  early  Christians  was  in  fact  a  monogram   of  our  Saviour's 
name:     '1(770-01?)  X(pio-ro?)  0(coi))  Y(I6y)  2(o)T»7p).     (1867.) 

Of  the  literature  that  has  gathered  about  the  pagan  ele 
ments  of  Christian  tradition  since  this  article  was  written  I 
will  cite  only  Professor  Usener's  fascinating  study,  '  Die  Le- 
genden  der  heiligen  Pelagia'  (Bonn,  1879),  *n  which  he  has 


1 82  THE   LEGEND    OF    VENUS. 

from  a  few  external  representations  there  was 
no  fusion.  The  enmity  to  the  fallen  and  exiled 
deities  was  bitter — indeed  we  may  call  it  sec 
tarian.  It  was  the  anger  which  a  follower  of  the 
new  Zeus  might  be  supposed  to  have  felt  against 
that  old  cannibal  Kronos.  To  the  apprehension  of 
the  early  Christians  the  heathen  gods  were  devils.1 
1  The  things  which  the  Gentiles  sacrifice,  they  sac 
rifice  to  devils  and  not  to  God  '  (i  Cor.  x.  10) :  '  to 
demons  ',  if  you  choose,  but  the  popular  mind  made 
little  distinction.  And  these  demons,  as  real  exist 
ences  and  not  mere  figments,  were  thought  to  be 
carrying  on  a  guerrilla  war  for  their  lost  cause  in 
the  nooks  and  corners  of  the  earth ;  and  though 
there  was  but  slender  proof  of  any  foul  play  on  the 
part  of  these  poor  devils,  the  zealots  of  the  period 
manufactured  some  admirable  stories  of  kidnapping 
and  the  like.  In  Italy  especially,  wild  rumors  were 
afloat  of  statues  of  Venus  called  into  life  by  magic 
rites;  all  which  rumors  were  nothing  but  far-off 
echoes  of  the  old  myth,  according  to  which  Pyg 
malion  roused  the  queen  of  love  from  her  long 

identified  many  of  the  Magdalene  figures  of  the  hagiology  with 
surnames  of  Venus-Aphrodite.  Usener's  paper  was  written  for 
the  Philological  Convention  at  Treves,  and  by  an  odd  chance  it 
was  at  Treves  that  I  read  it  for  the  first  time  in  1880.  As 
suredly  no  better  place  than  the  ancient  Augusta  Treverorum 
in  which  to  study  the  strange  blending  of  the  life  of  the  Church 
and  the  life  of  heathendom,  and  I  shall  always  think  of 
'AffrpodiTrj  IlcXayta,  or,  if  you  will,  Venus  Marina,  as  standing 
guard  by  the  Porta  Nigra,  and  St.  PelagSa  as  adoring  the  Holy 
Coat— B.  L.  G. 

1  Us  aimerent  mieux  souffrir  le  martyre  que  de  montrer  la 
moindre  veneration  pour  ce  diable  de  Jupiter,  cette  diablesse 
de  Diane  et  cette  archidiablesse  de  Venus. — Heine. 


THE   LEGEND    OF    VENUS.  183 

slumber  in  the  tomb.1  Instead  of  citing  the  great 
source  for  stories  of  this  kind,  Aureolus  Philippus 
Theodorus  Paracelsus 2  Bombast  ab  Hohenheim, 
we  will  content  ourselves  with  an  extract  from  a 
work  of  much  easier  access,  Burton's  Anatomy  of 
Melancholy  (Am.  ed.,  p.  447) : 

*  One  more  I  will  relate  out  of  Florilegus  ad 
annum  1058,  an  honest  historian  of  our  nation, 
because  he  telleth  it  so  confidently,  as  a  thing  in 
those  days  talked  of  all  over  Europe :  A  young 
gentleman  of  Rome,  the  same  day  that  he  was  mar 
ried,  after  dinner  with  the  bride  and  his  friends 
went  a  walking  into  the  fields,  and  towards  evening 
to  the  tennis-court  to  recreate  himself;  whilst  he 
played,  he  put  his  ring  on  the  finger  of  Venus 
Statua,  which  was  thereby  made  in  brass ;  after  he 
had  sufficiently  played  and  now  made  an  end  of  his 
sport,  he  came  to  fetch  his  ring,  but  Venus  had 
bowed  her  finger  in  and  he  could  not  get  it  off, 
whereupon  loth  to  make  his  company  tarry,  there 
left  it,  intending  to  fetch  it  the  next  day  or  at  some 
more  convenient  time  ;  went  thence  to  supper  and 
so  to  bed.  In  the  night  Venus  steps  in  between 
him  and  his  wife  (unseen  or  felt  of  her),  and  told 
him  that  she  was  his  wife,  that  he  had  betrothed 
himself  unto  her  by  that  ring  which  he  put  upon 
her  finger:  she  troubled  him  for  some  following 
nights.  He  not  knowing  how  to  help  himself,  made 
his  moan  to  one  Palumbus,  a  learned  magician  in 

1  Ovid,  Met.  x.  243-297.     Preller,  i.4  364. 

9  In  turning  over  Paracelsus,  we  have  stumbled  on  a  passage 
which  may  be  of  interest  to  those  who  intend  to  pursue  the 
subject  further :  Paracelsus,  De  Morbis  Invisib.  lib.  iv. 


1 84  THE   LEGEND    OF    VENUS. 

those  days,  who  gave  him  a  letter,  and  bid  him  at 
such  a  time  of  the  night,  in  such  a  cross-way,  at 
the  town's  end,  where  old  Saturn  would  pass  by 
with  his  associates  in  procession,  as  commonly  he 
did,  deliver  that  script  with  his  own  hands  to  Saturn 
himself;  the  young  man  of  a  bold  spirit  accord 
ingly  did  it,  and  when  the  old  fiend  had  read  it,  he 
called  Venus  to  him,  who  rode  before  him,  and 
commanded  her  to  deliver  his  ring,  which  forthwith 
she  did  and  so  the  gentleman  was  freed/  l 

Some  of  these  stones  were  carried  into  Germany 
and  grafted  on  earlier  traditions,  and  the  outgrowth 
was  the  figure  of  Frau  Venus,  who  holds  high 
revel  in  an  enchanted  mountain  and  lures  men  to 
eternal  ruin;  but  under  that  name  she  does  not 
seem  to  occur  earlier  than  the  fourteenth  century, 
and  we  must  look  for  her  analogies  among  the 
native  German  deities. 

In  the  somewhat  misty  German  Pantheon,  three 
personages  can  be  descried,  each  of  which  has  some 
analogy  with  Venus  ;  each  of  which  presents  points 
of  attachment  for  classic  traditions.2  The  most 
familiar  of  these  is  Freyja,  most  familiar  because 
she  has  given  her  name  to  the  sixth  day  of  the 
week,  Friday,  Veneris  dies,  Vendredi.  As  Venus 
was  espoused  to  a  man,  now  Adonis,  now  An- 
chises,  so  was  Freyja  married  to  a  man  with  an 
unpronounceable  Gothic  name ;  but  the  ungrateful 
mortal  forsook  her  and  she  sought  him  wandering 
through  the  wide,  wide  world,  a  roving  goddess 

1  The  story  is  also  well  told  by  Heine,  1.  c. 

2  On  this  section  see  Grimm's  Deutsche  Mythologie.     The 
book  has  an  index. 


THE   LEGEND    OF    VENUS.  185 

like  Astarte,  like  Dido,  like  Helen.  A  more  pro 
saic  goddess  is  Holda  (Huldah),  who  in  her  ca 
pacity  as  '  queen  of  heaven  ' — a  High-Dutch  Venus 
Urania — is  the  'old  woman  picking  geese',  whose 
performances  Christian  nursery-maids  still  point 
out  to  baptized  children  in  unheathen  America 
whenever  the  snow-flakes  begin  to  fall,  and  who 
appears  more  poetically  in  Notre  Dame  aux  Neiges. 
It  is  true  that  Holda  has  many  features  which 
remind  us  of  Diana.  She  is  at  once  the  wild 
huntress  and  the  goddess  of  the  distaff  and 
spindle.  But  as  Artemis  and  Aphrodite  have 
common  functions  and  are  often  merged  into  a 
common  person,  as  for  example  in  the  famous 
Diana  of  Ephesus,  so  Holda  as  goddess  of  the 
water  and  as  queen  of  the  elves  is  an  indisputable 
Venus,  and  it  is  her  mountain  that  is  called  Venus' 
mountain,  the  mountain  before  which  sits  the  trusty 
Eckhart  to  warn  the  unwary.  This  Eckhart  is  a 
strange  figure  out  of  the  olden  time;  a  strange 
cross  between  Cerberus  and  unhappy  Theseus  who, 
according  to  Vergil,  sits  and  will  sit  forever  .  .  . 
sedet  aeternumque  sedebit. 

The  third  personage  is  Halja,  unmentionable  to 
ears  polite  as — hell.  But  the  further  back  we  go 
in  the  history  of  this  deity,  the  less  hellish  she 
appears.  She  is  not  death,  she  does  not  kill,  she 
does  not  pursue;  she  only  receives  the  souls  of  the 
departed  and  holds  them  in  her  inexorable  embrace. 
According  to  one  account  she  is  half  black,  half 
white,  according  to  another  all  black.  So  Demeter 
was  draped  in  mourning,  so  Aphrodite  was  surnamed 


1 86  THE   LEGEND   OF    VENUS. 

the  Black ; l  and  as  the  Madonna  in  Italy  fell  heir 
to  some  of  the  attributes  of  the  exiled  queen  of 
love,  so  Our  Dear  Lady  (Unsere  liebe  Frau)  in 
Germany  assumed  the  color  of  the  departed  Halja ; 
and  we  have  seen  black  images  of  the  Virgin  in 
other  places  than  those  mentioned  by  Grimm.2 
This  Halja  seems  to  have  been  confounded  at  times 
with  Holda,  as  Venus  with  Proserpine. 

Goddesses  enough,  we  should  say,  to  represent 
Venus  ;  and  as  it  was  commonly  believed  that  men 
often  mysteriously  disappeared  (spirited  away,  as 
the  phrase  is)  and  spent  months  and  years  with  the 
elves,  it  was  not  long  before  a  hero  was  found  to 
take  the  place  of  Adonis  or  of  the  cithern-player 
Anchises.  In  Scottish  legend,  Thomas  the  Rhymer 
of  Ercildoune  and  Tamlane 8  figure  very  largely  as 
recipients  of  elfin  favors,  and  in  one  ballad  no  less 
a  being  than  the  '  quene  of  heuen  '  is  the  heroine, — 
in  another  the  inevitable  apple  comes  in.  But  we 
must  keep  away  from  the  treacherous  land  of  fairy 
and  confine  our  view  to  the  German  tradition  ;  and 
first  of  the  Tannhauser  of  history.  Tannhauser, 
Tannenhauser  or  Tanhuser,  whichever  you  will, 

1  The  explanation  of  the  MeXaii/iV  in  Pausanias  (viii.  6)  is 
wonderfully  prosaic,  and  being  somewhat  indecent  is  hereby 
assigned  to  Swinburne  as  a  theme. 

2  Especially  famous  is  the  Black  Virgin  of  Altotting.     On  a 
1  black  edition  '  of  the  Madonna  in  Auvergne  see  an  article  by 
Lady    Verney    in   the    Contemporary    Review    for   Dec.  1882. 
'  This  variety  is  generally  very  old  and  particularly  efficacious, 
being   probably  a   survival  of  the  idols  formed  of  meteoric 
stones,  like  "  the  image  of  Diana  of  the  Ephesians  descended 
from  heaven".' — B.  L.  G. 

3  Child,  English  and  Scottish  Ballads,  i.  213,  227,  232,  363, 
372 ;  W.  Scott,  Demonology  and  Witchcraft,  Letter  iv. 


THE   LEGEND    OF    VENUS.  1 8? 

was  a  Bavarian  knight,  who  lived  in  the  thirteenth 
century  and  distinguished  himself  as  a  Minnesinger. 
His  poems  are  said  to  mark  a  decided  decline  in 
tone  : 1  with  him  love  is  no  longer  ideal  but  sensual, 
and  his  verses  are  redolent  of  the  riotous  living  in 
which  he  spent  his  substance ;  and  it  was  as  the 
representative  of  this  voluptuous  decadence  of  the 
once  sacred  art  that  he  was  drawn  by  tradition  into 
the  Battle  of  the  Bards  on  the  Wartburg, — a  contest 
in  which  all  the  prominent  Minnesingers  of  the  time, 
real  and  imaginary,  were  engaged.2  This  prodigal 
sinner  and  singer  was  well  fitted  to  sustain  the  part 
of  the  lover  of  Frau  Venus,  and  the  older  character, 
whoever  he  was,  disappeared  to  make  room  for 
the  truant  bard. 

Here  is  an  outline  of  the  story.  Frau  Venus  had 
been  driven  out  of  her  chosen  home  in  the  south. 
Her  temples  had  been  destroyed,  so  that  scarce  one 
stone  was  left  upon  another,  and  in  her  dismay  she 
fled  far  northward,  if  peradventure  there  might  be 
some  place  of  refuge  found  for  her.  At  last,  in  the 
depths  of  the  Thuringian  forest  she  chanced  upon 
a  mountain,  Horsel  by  name,  and  in  its  recesses 
she  held  her  court.  Sounds  of  bewitching  music 
haunt  the  valleys  around,  and  draw  by  their 
enchantment  the  hearts  and  the  feet  of  all  who  hear 
to  the  abodes  of  the  queen  of  love.  Eckhart,  the 
Trusty,  sits  at  the  entrance  and  warns  the  unwary 
of  their  danger,  but  many  press  on  to  pleasure  and 
to  ruin.  Of  these  was  Tannhauser,  who  took  up 

1  Gervinus,  Geschichte  der  deutschen  National-literatur,  i. 

339- 

8  Gervinus,  ii.  36. 


1 88  THE   LEGEND    OF    VENUS. 

his  abode  with  Frau  Venus  and  enjoyed  all  the 
pleasures  of  sin  for  a  season.  But  one  day  his  heart 
awoke  from  its  slumber,  and  he  felt  how  grievously 
he  had  offended  God  and  done  wrong  to  his  own 
body  and  soul.  So  he  arose  and  went  to  Rome,  if 
so  be  he  might  find  forgiveness  for  his  great  sin. 
But  the  Pope,  whose  name  was  Urban,  entreated 
him  harshly,  and  showing  him  his  withered  staff, 
said,  '  When  this  staff  shall  bud,  then  shall  thy  sins 
be  forgiven.'  So  the  knight  departed,  grieving 
much,  and  because  there  seemed  to  be  no  salvation 
for  him,  he  went  back  again  to  Venus's  mountain, 
where  he  shall  dwell  until  the  last  day.  But  on  the 
third  day  the  Pope's  staff  budded,  and  the  Pope 
sent  into  all  lands  to  seek  Tannhauser,  but  Tann 
hauser  was  no  more  to  be  found. 

It  is  evident  that  in  this  form,  as  in  so  many  forms 
of  the  myth  of  Venus,  the  human  side  has  been 
turned  outward  and  the  original  symbolism  com 
pletely  hidden.  Indeed,  the  German  ballad  of 
Tannhauser  is  nothing  else  than  a  protest  against 
the  uncharitableness  of  the  priesthood  as  compared 
with  the  boundless  mercy  of  God ;  but  even  from 
this  point  of  view  we  see  that  the  old  myth  has  been 
transmuted  '  into  something  rich  and  strange  '.  It 
is  not  a  dead  body,  but  a  soul,  dead  in  trespasses 
and  sins,  that  is  to  be  quickened. 

The  story  is  best  set  forth  in  an  old  German 
ballad,  reprinted  by  Achim  Von  Arnim  in  his  well 
known  collection,  Des  Knaben  Wunderhorn.1  The 
language  does  not  indicate  a  great  antiquity ;  it  is 

1  i.  97.  From  Frau  Veneris  Berg  von  Kornmann,  Frankfurt, 
1614  ;  Pratorii,  Blockes-berg  Verrichtung,  Leipzig,  1668. 


THE   LEGEND    OF    VENUS.  189 

to  our  ear  very  much  the  racy  tongue  of  Luther's 
Table  Talk,  so  that  the  version  which  we  give  below, 
from  a  manuscript  source,  is  faulty  in  that  it  crowds 
too  many  obsolete  English  words  into  so  short  a 
space,  as  well  as  in  other  particulars  which  the 
discerning  student  of  English  ballad-writing  will 
not  fail  to  notice.  But  '  mon  siege  est  fait\  as  the 
French  historian,  Vertot,  said  when  new  sources  of 
information  were  pointed  out  to  him;  our  transla 
tion  is  written ;  and  we  only  hope  that  even  in  this 
imperfect  rendering  the  reader  may  still  trace  the 
rude  directness  of  the  original,  its  lively  portraiture, 
its  boldness  of  transition,  its  honesty  and  its  earn 
estness. 

THE  BALLAD  OF  TANHUSER. 

And  now  I  will  begin  my  song, 

And  of  Tanhuser  tell, 
And  all  the  wonders  done  the  while 

He  did  with  Venus  dwell. 

Tanhuser  was  a  right  good  knight, 
Great  wonders  he  fain  would  see, 

So  went  he  to  Dame  Venus'  mount, 
Where  other  fair  dames  be. 

'  Sir  Tanhuser,  I  love  you  much, — 
This  you  should  take  to  heart : 
You  sware  to  me  a  solemn  oath 
No  more  from  me  to  part.' 

'  Dame  Venus,  that  I  did  not  do, 

And  that  I  will  gainsay : 
There's  none  that  saith  so,  saving  you, 
So  help  me  God  this  day.' 


190  THE   LEGEND    OF    VENUS. 

1  Sir  Tanhuser,  how  say  you  so  ! 

Here  you  must  spend  your  life  : 
I'll  give  you  one  of  my  play-feres 
To  be  your  wedded  wife.' 

'  If  I  should  take  another  wife 

Than  her  which  I  desire, 
Then  I  must  burn  forevermore 
In  brimstone  and  hell-fire.' 

'  You  talk  so  much  about  hell-fire 

And  have  not  been  therein — 
Bethink  ye  of  my  rosy  mouth 
And  of  my  dimpled  chin.' 

'  What  good  doth  me  your  rosy  mouth  ? 

It  doth  not  please  me  moe  ; 
By  all  dames'  honor,  Venus  sweet, 
Give  me  good  leave  to  go.' 

«  Sir  Tanhuser,  if  you  wish  leave, 

I  will  not  give  you  none  : 

Now  stay,  my  noble  Tanhuser, 

And  fresh  your  life  anon.' 

«  My  way  of  life  hath  fallen  sick, 

I  cannot  longer  stay  ; 
From  your  proud  body  give  me  leave, 
Sweet  dame,  to  go  away.' 

'  Sir  Tanhuser,  nay  speak  not  so, 

You  are  not  in  your  mind  : 
Let  us  go  back  into  my  bower, 
Our  fill  of  love  to  find.' 

'  I  am  a-weary  of  your  love, 

In  which  I  wont  to  revel — 
O  Venus,  noble  damosel, 

Methinks  you  be  a  she-devil.' 


THE    LEGEND    OF    VENUS.  19! 

'  Tanhuser,  how  can  you  speak  so  ? 

Too  bitter  is  your  gird. 
If  you  should  longer  stay  with  us, 
You'll  pay  me  well  that  word.1 

'  Tanhuser,  if  that  you  will  go, 

Take  leave  of  my  knights  around  ;  * 
And  when  you  journey  through  the  land, 
My  praises  shall  you  sound.' 

Tanhuser  from  the  mountain  went 

In  sorrow  and  in  ruth — 
'  Unto  Rome  city  I  will  go 

And  tell  the  Pope  the  truth. 

'  Now  joyously,  with  God  to  friend, 

To  Rome  I  trust  to  win. 
The  Holy  Father,  Pope  Urban, 
Will  shrive  me  clean  from  sin. 

1  Lord  Pope  !     O  Holy  Father  mine, 

I  am  in  sore  distress 
For  all  the  sin  which  I  have  done, 
The  which  I  now  confess. 

'  A  twelvemonth  fully  I  have  been 

With  Venus,  that  ladye  ; 
Now  I  wish  shrift  and  penitence, 
God's  face  that  I  may  see.' 

The  Pope  he  had  a  white,  white  staff, 

'Twas  made  of  a  dry,  dry  tree  : 
1  When  this  staff  beareth  leaves,  then  shall 
Thy  sins  forgiven  be.' 

1 '  I'lJ  pay  that  doctrine  or  else  die  in  debt.' — Shakespeare. 

2  The  original :  von  meinen  Greisen,  'from  my  greybeards  '. 
Heine  :  de  mes  chevaliers^  which  we  have  adopted  as  making  a 
clearer  sense. 


IQ2  THE   LEGEND    OF    VENUS. 

'  If  I  should  live  not  more  than  a  year — 

But  one  year  here  below — 

I  would  do  penance  and  repent, 

God's  grace  again  to  owe.'1 

Then  gat  he  him  away  from  Rome, 

And  sorely  he  did  grieve  : 
'  O  Mary  Mother,  Virgin  pure, 
If  thee  I  thus  must  leave, 

'  I'll  get  me  back  to  yon  mountain, 

To  dwell  forever  and  aye 
With  Venus,  mine  own  ladye  dear, 
Where  God  will  have  me  stay.' 

*  O  welcome  home,  Tanhuser  dear, 
I've  missed  you  long  and  sore  : 
O  welcome  home,  my  dearest  lord, 
My  chosen  evermore.' 

Mayhap  the  third  day  after  that, 

The  staff  again  waxed  greeri, 
And  criers  were  sent  to  every  land 
Where  Tanhuser  had  been. 

But  he  was  back  in  Venus'  Mount, 

And  there  he  shall  aby2 
Forever,  till  the  judgment  day, 

When  God  his  soul  shall  try. 

Now  this  is  what  no  priest  should  do — 

Miscomfort  any  that  live  : 
If  a  man  do  penance  and  repent, 

His  sins  he  should  forgive. 

1  Owe,  'own'. 

2  Aby,  usually  'pay  for':  here 'wait',  as  in  Spenser,  F.  Q. 
vii.  6,  24  :  But  Jove  all  fearelesse  forc't  them  to  aby. 


THE   LEGEND    OF   VENUS.  193 

We  cannot  say  with  Heine  that  it  is  magnificent, 
but  we  can  recognize  with  him  a  certain  artlessness 
that  is  beyond  the  reach  of  art.  The  whole  con 
ception  is  as  dramatic  as  the  Iliad.  A  short  pre 
lude,  and  we  plunge  at  once  into  the  thick  of  the 
drama.  The  ballad-singer  has  seized  on  the  organic 
centre  of  the  whole  myth,  and  instead  of  wearying 
us  with  a  long  description  of  the  wiles  by  which 
Venus  enticed  the  luckless  sinner  into  her  den,  he 
brings  before  us  at  once  the  two  contending  parties, 
as  Homer  introduces  to  us,  in  the  very  first  lines, 
Atrides,  king  of  men,  and  godlike  Achilles.  In  this 
controversy  the  character  of  Dame  Venus  comes 
out  in  clear  outlines,  by  no  means  as  the  Aphro 
dite  Urania,  but  rather  as  the  '  strange  woman '  of 
the  Book  of  Proverbs.  She  has  all  the  insolence 
and  cajolery  of  her  class  ;  and  this  unfortunate  god 
dess  understands  as  well  and  applies  as  readily 
as  any  unfortunate  female  the  argumentum  ad 
hominem,  Tannhauser  on  the  other  hand  appears 
throughout  as  a  creature  of  impulse ;  he  is  as 
violent  in  his  efforts  to  get  out  as  he  had  doubtless 
been  eager  to  get  in  ;  and  it  is  a  most  happy  stroke 
by  which  the  account  of  the  journey  is  put  into  the 
mouth  of  the  headlong  knight  himself,  as  if  the 
ballad-singer  sympathized  with  the  impatience  of 
his  hotspur  hero.  And  as  the  Iliad  ends,  where  it 
ought  to  end,  with  the  burial  of  Hector,  in  whose 
mound  were  entombed  all  the  hopes  of  Troy ;  so 
this  poem  ends,  as  it  ought  to  end,  with  the  final 
disappearance  of  Tannhauser,  and  does  not  deaden 
the  dread  effect  by  such  prurient  descriptions  of 
sensual  joys  as  we  find  in  Mr.  Swinburne's  verses. 


194  THE   LEGEND   OF    VENUS. 

The  closing  verse  of  the  ballad  is  in  exact  accord 
ance  with  the  dramatic  canon  of  antiquity ;  and  no 
Greek  chorus  ever  chanted  a  more  appropriate 
exodos  to  a  tragedy  than  that  which  rounds  off 
the  production  of  this  unknown  genius.  The  pecu 
liar  character  of  the  tragedies  of  yEschylus  pre 
cludes  a  comparison ;  but  if  we  examine  Euripides, 
we  shall  find  that  no  less  than  five  plays  of  this 
master  end  with  the  same  wretched  tail-piece: 

A  Lord  Steward  High  is  Zeus  in  the  sky, 
And  much  that  is  odd's  fulfilled  by  the  gods ; 
That  comes  not  about  for  which  you  look  out ; 
What  you  don't  expect,  that  God  doth  effect, 
And  such  was  the  course  of  this  story.1 

And  this  is  the  best ;  the  rest  are  utterly  insigni 
ficant.  Sophocles,  we  must  confess,  does  a  little 
better;  and  we  think  that  the  close  of  the  Antigone, 
in  which  the  poet  urges  the  importance  of  sober 
thought  and  the  obligation  of  reverence  towards 
the  gods,  is  not  unworthy  of  the  author  of  Tann- 
hauser,  though  of  course  devoid  of  the  deep  morat 
significance  of  those  noble  verses  : 

Das  soil  rummer  kein  Priester  thun — 
Dem  Menschen  Misstrost  geben  : 
Will  er  denn  Buss  und  Reu  empfahn, 
Seine  Siinde  sei  ihm  vergeben. 

In  all  seriousness — for  it  may  be  necessary  to  say 
that  we  have  been  jesting — we  prefer  the  old  ballad 
to  its  modern  interpreters ;  and  in  vindication  of  this 

JMedea,  1415  seqq.  Comp.  Alcestis,  1160  ;  Andromache, 
1285;  Bacchae,  1358;  Helena,  1688.  The  Medea  tail-piece 
begins  with  TroXXwi/TQ/iiayZeuff  eV 'oXu/ATTw  ;  the  others,  TroAXat 
/Liop^ai  rail/  datfiovifov ,  '  how  many  the  forms  of  these  devilish 
storms  !  ' 


THE   LEGEND    OF   VENUS.  1 95 

opinion  it  will  be  necessary  to  give  a  brief  account 
of  the  way  in  which  the  story  has  been  handled  by 
sundry  authors  of  greater  or  lesser  fame. 

The  '  Tannenhauser '  of  Ludwig  Tieck  is  found 
in  a  collection  called  '  Phantasus ',  which  contains 
his  charming  little  story  of  the  'Elves',  familiar  to 
the  English-reading  public  in  Carlyle's  translation. 
But  the  story  of  Tannhauser  has  not  fared  as  well 
in  Tieck's  hands.  By  the  side  of  the  ballad,  it  is 
colorless  and  conventional.  In  his  version,  Tann 
hauser,  an  'Imperial  councillor',  suddenly  vanishes, 
and  after  a  long  absence  in  the  mountain  of  Venus, 
reappears  to  an  intimate  of  his,  Frederick  von 
Wolfsburg.  His  pilgrim's  weeds  disclose  his  inten 
tion  to  go  to  Rome ;  and  duly  urged,  he  unfolds  to 
Frederick  the  tale  of  his  transgressions*  A  couple  of 
pages  are  devoted  to.  an  analysis  of  Tannhauser's 
nervous  system — a  system  with  which  the  real 
Tannhauser  had  as  little  to  do  as  with  the  Coper- 
nican — and  to  a  description  of  certain  inner  music 
which  must  have  puzzled  sorely  the  stethoscope- 
doctors  of  the  period.  Out  of  this  nervous  system 
the  Imperial  councillor  finds  his  way  into  a  wood, 
in  which  he  loses  it  again,  and  rambles  about  until  he 
comes  to  a  garden  full  of  beautiful  roses.  Of  course 
'  a  marvellous  longing  after  the  roses  took  possession 
of  him  ;  he  could  not  restrain  himself,  he  forced  his 
way  through  iron  railings  and  got  into  the  garden. 
Forthwith  he  fell  on  the  ground,  embraced  the 
bushes  with  his  arms,  kissed  the  roses  on  their  red 
mouth,  and  melted  into  tears.'  In  this  pastime  he 
is  interrupted  by  the  approach  of  two  girls,  with  the 
younger  of  whom — Emma  by  name — he  incon- 


196  THE   LEGEND    OF   VENUS. 

tinently  falls  in  love.  Just  as  Tannhauser  had 
established  himself  on  the  footing  of  a  friend  of  the 
family,  and  had  reached  'that  stage  of  the  tender 
passion  which  bound  him  to  regard  everybody  else 
as  the  foe  of  the  family ',  a  rival  appeared  ;  and  we 
learn  to  our  great  relief  that  the  inner  music  stopped, 
although  the  nervous  system  seems  to  have  been  as 
complicated  as  ever.  The  other  man  finally  carries 
off  the  prize,  and  Tannhauser  goes  stark  mad  with 
love  and  jealousy,  and  slays  his  rival.  The  sequel 
is  for  all  the  world  like  an  opera : — 

First  chorist : — Tannhauser's  sweetheart  dies  of  grief. 
Second  chorist : — Tannhauser's  mother  dies  of  grief. 
Third  chorist : — Tannhauser's  father  dies  of  grief. 
Tutti  : — Tannhauser,  you  must  die  of  grief. 

But  Tannhauser  himself — like  many  another  hero 
of  the  same  latitude — thought  it  better  to  die  of 
drink;  and  so  he  gave  himself  up  to  all  manner  of 
debauchery,  until  he  felt  that  '  hell  was  lusting  after 
him '.  In  a  spirit  of  accommodation  he  called  on 
the  arch-enemy  to  show  him  the  way,  and  the  foe 
of  God  and  man  put  a  song  in  his  mouth,  and  the 
song  acted  as  his  guide — how,  he  does  not  deign  to 
explain,  'ffa  ira,  fa  ira'  At  the  entrance  to 
the  mountain  of  Venus,  Tannhauser  is  stopped  by 
Eckhart,  but  he  presses  past  the  faithful  sentinel  to 
the  mountain,  as  he  forced  his  way  through  the 
iron  railings  to  the  roses.  A  new  delirious  music 
greets  his  ear,  and  the  jocund  heathen  gods  come 
trooping  forth  to  meet  him,  Frau  Venus  at  their 
head.  In  the  society  of  the  Queen  of  Love  and  of 
the  beauties  of  her  court  he  dwelt,  how  long  he 
knew  not,  revelling  in  all  the  pleasures  that  earth 


THE   LEGEND   OF    VENUS.  1 97 

affords.  '  Insatiate  was  his  bosom  and  infinite  the 
enjoyment';  but  the  appetite  of  readers  is  not 
insatiate,  and  their  patience  but  finite.  Suddenly 
a  longing  for  the  poor  mean  life  of  other  mortals 
came  over  Tannhauser.  God  in  his  mercy  opened 
a  way  of  escape,  and  now  he  is  on  his  way  to  Rome 
to  seek  absolution  from  the  Holy  Father.  When 
Tannhauser  was  through  with  his  story,  Frederick 
quietly  told  him  that  he  was  beside  himself;  that 
he,  Frederick,  had  taken  her,  Emma,  to  his  wedded 
wife ;  that  the  said  Emma  was  still  alive,  and  that 
Tannhauser  had  vanished  before  their  marriage, 
and  had  never  been  in  love  with  the  said  Emma. 
Tannhauser  scouted  these  very  sensible  representa 
tions,  as  a  device  of  the  arch-enemy  to  keep  him 
from  going  to  Rome,  and  speedily  took  his  depar 
ture  for  the  Holy  City.  Some  months  afterward 
Tannhauser  came  back  rather  the  worse  for  wear, 
rushed  into  the  chamber  where  his  friend  was  yet 
sleeping,  waked  him  by  a  burning  kiss,  and  said 
that  the  Holy  Father  could  not  and  would  not 
forgive  him,  that  he  must  needs  return  to  his  old 
abode.  Frederick  roused  himself  and  went  to 
the  apartment  of  his  spouse.  But  Tannhauser  had 
been  there  before  him  and  murdered  the  fair  Emma 
— a  solemn  warning  against  the  '  unwisdom '  of 
separate  chambers  for  married  folk,  and  one  which 
Balzac  should  have  known  when  he  wrote  his 
chapter  on  that  subject  in  his  notorious  '  Physiologic 
du  Manage '.  Tannhauser's  kiss  had  magic  power, 
and,  like  the  mysterious  song  before  mentioned, 
drew  Frederick  toward  the  mountain  of  Venus. 
Exeunt  omnes.  We  lay  heavy  odds  on  the  ballad. 


198  THE  LEGEND    OF   VENUS. 

A  strict  chronology  would  require  us  to  consider 
next  in  order  Wagner's  Tannhauser ;  but  as  a 
proper  appreciation  of  that  enigmatic  work  of  art 
requires  a  review  of  the  music  as  well  as  of  the 
drama,  we  must  content  ourselves  with  a  brief 
examination  of  the  English  reflection,  which  is  a 
somewhat  ambitious  attempt  of  two  young  poets  to 
make  an  Idyl  of  the  King  out  of  the  opera.  We 
have  but  little  space  for  a  criticism  of  the  poetry  of 
Messrs.  Temple  Bulwer  and  Trevor  Fane.  Of  course 
it  is  Tennysonian.  Everything  is  Tennysonian  now- 
a-days.  We  have  the  same  free  handling  of  the 
blank  verse,  the  same  fondness  of  salient  description, 
the  same  incorporation  of  the  highly  spiritual  in  the 
highly  sensuous,  the  same  affectation  without  the 
exalted  genius  that  redeems  the  illustrious  original. 
Of  course  the  language  is  a  purely  artificial  language, 
an  impossible  language,  a  language  in  which  such 
harsh  Germanisms  as '  name-scroll'  and  such  mouth- 
filling  words  as  'Aurorean',  such  intricate  com 
pounds  as  '  disintertwined '  and  such  monsters  as 
*  direful-sweet'  are  found  in  'blandly-busy'  com 
munion  with  a  galvanized  glossary  of  old  Saxon. 
Americans  who  writhe  under  the  English  condemna 
tion  of  wilted'  will  be  consoled  by  finding  it  here  ; 
and  those  who,  as  Gifford  says,  '  live  upon  a 
whUome  for  a  week '  will  have  ample  pasture  in 
'sinewous'  and  'gauds'  and  'purfle',  and  in  forms 
like  *  writhen  '  and  'bursten '.  '  Nathless  '  they  may 
be  puzzled  sometimes  to  decide  whether  a  word  is 
old  English  or  belongs  to  the  peculiar  diction  of 
the  ingenious  young  gentlemen  whose  'gorgeous 
glooms  '  are  not  always  '  litten  '  by  '  rifted  glare  '. 


THE   LEGEND    OF   VENUS.  199 

So  for  our  part  we  profess  our  inability  to  decide 
whether  the  '  filed  pilgrims '  who  '  fared  beside ' 
Elizabeth  were  travel-stained  in  the  old  ballad 
sense1  or  arranged  in  files  ;  probably  and  improperly 
the  latter.  As  for  anachronisms,  they  are  patent 
enough  and  we  do  not  quarrel  with  them ;  but 
cheap  allusions  to  Shakespeare  and  Milton,  such  as 
'  crack  of  that  tremendous  doom  ',  '  flashy  songs  ', 
and  '  ghastly  glare  that  knows  no  speculation  ',  are 
a  little  out  of  place  in  a  supposed  mediaeval  poem, 
though  not  quite  as  bad  as  the  hackneyed  quotation 
from  Ovid,  '  rude  and  undigested  mass ',  which 
Walter  Savage  Landor  has  put  into  the  mouth  of 
Pericles.  Again,  while  we  admit  that  from  the 
point  of  view  of  the  middle  ages  it  is  correct  enough2 
to  call  Aphrodite 

1  That  fair  fiend 
Venus,  whose  temples  are  the  veins  in  youth ' — 

it  is  not  necessary  to  speak  of  a  divinity  of  such 
eminent  social  position  as  *  the  lustful  queen  ',  '  the 
libidinous  goddess  '  and  '  that  bloat  queen  '.  Tann- 
hauser's  'she-devil'  was  hard  enough  to  bear,  and 
observe  how  she  resented  it.  She  never  called  him 
'  Sir '  again ;  and  he  deserved  to  lose  the  title  after 
giving  his  lady-love  such  an  impolite  Old-Nick- 
name.3  But  we  have  little  to  do  with  the  poem  as  a 

1  And  take  her  up  in  thine  armes  twaine 
Jf 'or  filing  of  her  feete.  — Child  Waters. 

2  See  some  remarks  on  this  subject  by  Lewes,  Life  of  Goethe, 
i.  241. 

3  Old-Nickname  :    see  Pott,  Personennamen,  p.  10,  note, — 
Nix  —  devil.     (1867.)     This  etymology  surrendered  long  ago 
to  its  rival,  '  an  ekename  '. — B.  L.  G. 


2OO  THE   LEGEND    OF   VENUS. 

piece  of  writing;  and  after  making  general  amends 
to  the  authors  by  acknowledging  the  pleasure  we 
have  derived  from  sundry  dainty  bits,  we  pass  on 
to  the  consideration  of  the  plot,  which  is,  in  the 
main,  Wagner's. 

In  this  treatment  of  the  story,  the  basis  is  changed 
— or  rather  the  centre  of  gravity  rests  on  the  Battle 
of  the  Bards,  that  shadowy  contest  in  which  no 
real  interest  can  be  felt,  and  so  far  the  authors  have 
made  a  great  mistake.  To  the  fatal  love  of  Venus 
a  counterpoise  is  put  in  the  pure  and  human  love 
of  Elizabeth ;  and  Tannhauser's  passionate  nature 
is  counterbalanced  by  the  calmer  temperament  of 
his  friend  Wolfram  of  the  Willow-brook, 

'  Who  long  had  loved  Elizabeth, 
As  one  should  love  a  star  in  heaven,  who  knows 
The  distance  of  it  and  its  reachlessness.' 

This  is  all  well  enough  for  melodramatic  pur 
poses,  but  the  irredeemable  blunder  is  the  change 
in  the  traditional  catastrophe.  We  are  as  sorry  for 
Tannhauser  as  any  of  our  sentimental  great-grand 
mothers,  who  used  to  pelt  good  old  Samuel  Rich 
ardson  with  petitions  to  save  the  soul  of  Lovelace ; 
yes,  we  too  are  sorry  for  Tannhauser,  but  in  order 
to  the  true  poetic  effect  it  is  essential  that  he  be 
damned. 

According  to  this  rendering,  on  Tannhauser's 
return  from  his  first  stay  with  Dame  Venus,  he  is 
brought  back  to  court  by  Wolfram,  and  then  ensues 
the  Battle  of  the  Bards.  The  theme  is  Love,  and 
Tannhauser  so  incenses  the  assemblage  of  '  shaggy 
barons  '  and  '  grim  gnarled  men '  by  his  fervid 
praise  of  sensual  pleasure,  that  they  would  have  put 


THE   LEGEND   OF    VENUS.  2OI 

him  to  death  had  it  not  been  for  the  intervention  of 
Elizabeth,  who  pitied  and  still  loved  the  fallen  soul. 
The  Landgrave  dismissed  Tannhauser  from  his 
court  to  seek  in  Rome  forgiveness  of  his  sin.  Eliza 
beth  pines  a  twelvemonth,  and  when  she  finds  that 
Tannhauser  has  not  returned  with  the  pilgrim-band, 
and  that  he  is  still  unshriven,  she  dies  of  a  broken 
heart  Wolfram  in  his  anguish  *  wanders  forth 
incurious  of  the  way ',  and  in  his  aimless  rambles 
falls  in  with  Tannhauser,  who  after  much  colloquy 
tells  the  story  of  his  visit  to  Rome  and  the  harsh 
sentence  of  the  Pope.  As  he  leans  exhausted  on 
Wolfram's  bosom,  the  old  seductive  melody  comes 
back  to  him  in  his  delirium,  from  which  he  is 
aroused  only  by  the  announcement  of  Elizabeth's 
death — aroused  to  a  faint  effort  after  repentance. 
While  he  is  thus  struggling  with  the  temptations  of 
sin  and  the  shadows  of  death,  Elizabeth's  corpse  is 
carried  by,  and  Tannhauser  '  falls  flat  upon  the  bier 
of  love,  his  bourn  at  last '.  Just  as  his  spirit  had 
parted,  a  messenger,  bearing  'a  withered  branch 
o'er-flourish'd  with  green  leaves ',  came  dashing  in, 
too  late  to  reassure  the  poor  sinner  on  earth,  not 
too  late  to  give  hope  to  his  mourning  friends. 
Very  pretty,  very  sentimental  and  very  modern. 

If  the  twin  poets  have  erred  in  dressing  up  the 
story  with  too  much  reference  to  operatic  points 
and  to  the  requirements  of  modern  sentimentality, 
Mr.  Swinburne  is  certainly  not  open  to  the  charge 
of  over-scrupulous  regard  for  the  nerves  of  anybody, 
perhaps  not  even  excepting  his  own.  Of  the  whole 
collection  of  poems  which  he  has  put  forth,  we  have 
neither  time  nor  patience  to  treat.  With  frank 


2O2  THE   LEGEND    OF    VENUS. 

indecency  every  scholar  has  more  or  less  to  do ; 
and  many  a  plodding  student  has  read  his  Petro- 
nius  with  more  concern  about  the  corruption  of  the 
text  than  about  the  corruption  of  morals  which  that 
text  indicates.  But  Swinburne's  indecency  is  not 
the  childlike  nudity  of  Aristophanes,  nor  the  open 
vulgarity  of  Martial,  nor  the  outspoken  candor  of 
the  old  ballad.  Compare  with  him  the  most  frolic 
passages  of  Ariosto,  or  the  most  highly  colored 
stanzas  in  Shakespeare's  Venus  and  Adonis — to 
take  an  extreme  instance — and  the  difference  in 
healthiness  will  appear.  Swinburne  has  neither  the 
excuse  of  passion  nor  that  of  art.  Not  of  passion : 
for  true  passion  expresses  itself  with  more  direct 
ness  ;  it  is  depraved  and  jaded  appetite  that  needs 
prolonged  and  varied  excitement,  the  pain  of 
scourge  and  prick  of  nettles.  Not  of  art :  for  art  in 
any  high  and  noble  sense  cannot  live  in  pruriency. 
The  most  famous  works  in  this  line  have  never  had 
more  than  an  ephemeral  existence ;  or  if  they  have 
survived,  have  survived  by  reason  of  other  qualities. 
How  many  of  our  readers  are  familiar  with  the 
name  of  Choderlos  de  Laclos  ?  and  yet '  Les  Liaisons 
Dangereuses '  was  the  most  famous  book  of  its  time. 
Who  in  our  day  can  bear  to  read  the  Memoirs  of 
Casanova  ?  And  yet  they  were  deemed  a  marvel 
of  cleverness  when  they  first  appeared.  Amatory 
poetry,  falsely  so-called,  has  less  chance  if  possible 
than  prose.  There  is  much  beside  '  chambering 
and  wantonness  '  to  commend  Byron's  Don  Juan  ; 
else  even  that  had  died  with  Little's  poems,  and 
been  gathered  to  its  impure  fathers,  Piron  and  La 


THE   LEGEND    OF    VENUS.  203 

Fontaine.1  Mr.  Swinburne,  then,  unless  he  is  cured 
of  the  moral  leprosy  which  incrusts  his  composi 
tions,  will  not  live  as  a  poet.  As  a  museum  of 
morbid  moral  anatomy,  as  a  curiosity-shop  of  out- 
of-the-way  phrases,  as  a  mosaic  made  up  of  odds 
and  ends  of  quaint  learning,  as  a  specimen  of  Ten- 
nysonianism  possessed  of  an  unclean  spirit,  the 
'  Laus  Veneris  '  may  retain  a  niche  in  the  collector's 
library  and  be  occasionally  peeped  into  by  a  stu 
dent  of  literature.  But  the  people  that  are  buying 
the  book  now  are  those  who  buy  every  new  impro 
priety  that  comes  out,  whether  Michelet's  '  Love  ' 
and  '  Woman  ',  or  Victor  Hugo's  revived  horror, 
'Bug  JargaT.* 

A  few  words  will  compass  what  we  have  to  say 
of  Mr.  Swinburne's  treatment   of  the   legend   to 

1  Of  course  the  reference  is  to  the  La  Fontaine  of  the  Contes 
and  not  to  the  La  Fontaine  of  the  Fables,  and  a  moral  might 
be  drawn  from  the  relative  vitality  of   the  two    halves    of   a 
most  delightful  poet. — B.  L.  G. 

2  This  preachment  against  a  poet  who  had  already  written 
'Atalanta  in  Calydon  '  is  a  curious  example  of  the  prevalence 
of  moral  indignation  over  artistic  sense,  and  seems  strangely 
old-fashioned  now  that  Mr.  Swinburne  has  become  a  classic  in 
his  way,  and  to  no  one  is  it  more  incomprehensible  than  to  the 
critic,  whose  eyes  have  been  opened  by  recent  developments. 
But  it  must  be  remembered  that  the  cry  of  '  art  for  art's  sake  ' 
was  not  so  prevalent  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago  as  it  is  now, 
and  the  literary  cult  of  the  Great  Goddess  Lubricity  did  not 
count  so  many  votaries.     And  so  let  the  artistic  and  the  moral 
estimates  stand  as  historical  curiosities,  as  records  of  a  past, 
when  a  contributor  to  the  Contemporary  Review,  Nov.   1873 
(G.    B.    Smith),    called    Swinburne's    poetry   'the    alliterative 
deification  of  lust ',  and  Professor  Huxley  heard  no  music  in 
the  school  that  might  not  be  characterized  as  '  sensual  cater 
wauling  '.— B.  L.  G. 


204  THE   LEGEND   OF    VENUS. 

which  we  have  gradually  narrowed  our  view.  To 
open  the  recesses  of  the  mountain  of  Venus  after 
Tannhauser  had  gone  back  to  dwell  there  unto  the 
end,  is  of  itself  an  offence  against  every  correct 
instinct  of  taste ;  just  as  to  save  Tannhauser  after 
the  priest's  doom  had  been  pronounced  was  to 
weaken  in  a  measure  the  double  moral  effect.  Yet 
the  one  or  the  other  may  have  been  an  error  of 
judgment,  and  in  this  respect  we  would  not  speak 
more  harshly  of  Mr.  Swinburne  than  of  Messrs. 
Bulwer  and  Fane.  But  to  blend  the  description  of 
a  physical  love,  fierce  in  its  satiety,  with  blasphemies 
the  most  abominable,  is  to  insult  every  better  feeling 
of  our  nature,  and  to  crush  out  the  sympathy  which 
might  have  been  felt  with  the  repentant  sinner,  who 
had  been  thrust  back  to  sin  by  the  unforgiving 
priest.  Surely  the  reverence  which  ought  to  dwell 
in  every  true  poet's  heart  should  have  forbidden 
what  artistic  fidelity  does  not  require,  and  if  it  did 
require,  cannot  excuse,  these  parodies  of  the  sacred 
words  of  Holy  Writ,  this  familiar  treatment  of  the 
person  of  our  Saviour,  in  comparison  with  which 
the  grossest  ribaldry  is  almost  respectful.  Much 
of  it  is  obscure,  and  we  marvel  at  the  corruption  of 
this  age  which  must  find  a  peculiar  charm  in 
working  out  naughtiness  as  if  it  were  a  conundrum, 
instead  of  buying  it  ready  made  as  in  '  Les  Cent 
Nouvelles  Nouvelles ',  or  the  '  Heptameron '  of  Mar 
guerite  of  Navarre,  or  any  of  the  old  collections. 

But  we  have  done  with  the  subject,  and  in  view 
of  the  political  and  social  corruption  of  our  country 
we  have  not  the  heart  to  insist  on  a  regeneration. 
The  Lust  of  the  Eyes  and  the  Lust  of  the  Flesh  under 


THE   LEGEND    OF    VENUS.  2O$ 

the  leadership  of  the  Pride  of  Life,  that  untranslate- 
able,1  beggarly,  bragging,  restless  pride  of  life,  are 
the  ruling  trinity  of  our  boasted  republican  world  ; 
and  it  is  idle  to  show  that  even  in  the  crude  legend  of 
a  '  creed  outworn '  there  were  visions  of  love  faithful 
in  death  and  hopes  of  immortality,  for  these  are 
times  when  a  spotless  religion  and  a  full  revelation 
are  scouted  and  set  aside,  when  men  '  leave  the  bread 
of  angels  for  the  husks  that  the  swine  do  eat.' 

1 1  John  ii.  16  fj  aXafrveia  rov  @lov.  See  Trench,  Synonyms 
of  the  New  Testament,  s.  v.  d\a£o>v.  (1867.)  Ribbeck's  clas 
sical  treatise,  '  Alazon',  will  be  in  every  scholar's  mind  now. — 
B.  L.  G. 

2  Imitatio  Christi,  iii.  14  :  qui  comedebant  panem  angelorum 
vidi  siliquis  delectari  porcorum. 


XANTHIPPE  AND  SOCRATES 


XANTHIPPE  AND  SOCRATES. 

Zeller,1  the  well-known  historian  of  Greek  philo 
sophy,  has  reprinted  among  these  '  Prelections  and 
Treatises  '  his  scholarly  jeu  d' esprit  m  vindication  of 
Xanthippe.2  It  is  a.  jeu  d' esprit,  but  as  learned  men 
are  generally  so  matter-of-fact  in  their  flirtations 
with  the  historic  muse  as  to  challenge  a  scrutiny  of 
their  intentions,  our  author  has  done  well  to  inform 
us,  not  only  in  the  body  of  the  article  itself,  but  also 
in  divers  other  places,  that  he  is  almost,  if  not  alto 
gether,  in  sport.  We,  who  pride  ourselves  on  being 
very  much  in  earnest,  sincerely  wish  that  some  com 
petent  scholar  would  enter  the  lists  as  a  real  com 
batant  and  engage  in  a  fight  a  entrance  in  behalf  of 
the  slandered  lady.  A  mock  championship  like 
Zeller's  is  apt  to  do  more  harm  than  good,  and  we 
admire  the  thorough  conviction  of  an  old  fellow,  who 
one  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago  maintained  the 
quarrel  of  Xanthippe  against  all  comers,  and  illus 
trated  his  theme  by  a  parallel  worthy  of  Plutarch, 
between  Socrates  and  Luther,  Xanthippe  and 

1  Zeller :    Zur   Ehrenrettung  der  Xanthippe2   (in  :    Vortrage 
und  Abhandlungen.  geschichtlichen  Inhalts.     Leipzig,  1865.) 

2  On  comparing  my  study  again  with  Zeller's  after  the  lapse 
of  twenty-three  years,  I  find,  as  was  to  be  expected,  that  many 
of  the  points  made  are  taken  from  the  illustrious  historian  of 
Greek  philosophy  ;  but  my  '  Xanthippe  and  Socrates  '  is  nearly 
three  times  as  long  as  Zeller's  'Zur  Ehrenrettung',  and  what 
has  been  added  is  not  all  padding. — B.  L.  G. 


2IO  XANTHIPPE   AND  SOCRATES. 

Katharine  von  Bora.  Nor  was  the  worthy  gentleman, 
Heumann  by  name,  so  far  out  of  the  way;  for 
Luther's  Kate  was  inclined  to  be  a.  termagant,  and 
although  Luther  does  not  seem  to  have  been  as  quiet 
under  her  goad  as  Socrates  was  under  Xanthippe's, 
it  must  be  remembered  that  we  are  not  favored  with 
as  full  reports  of  the  table-talk  of  the  Greek  philo 
sopher  as  of  the  German  reformer.  But  tempting  as 
is  the  comparison  of  the  two  couples,  we  must  brush 
by  them  resolutely  to  take  up  our  first  position,  and 
to  express  our  firm  conviction  of  the  inutility  of  any 
attempt  to  vindicate  Xanthippe's  character.  How 
ever  skilful  her  champion  might  be,  we  know  how 
we  should  make  our  betting-book.  There  is  a  mel 
ancholy  Greek  proverb  to  the  effect  that  '  whom 
fortune  hath  painted  black  all  time  cannot  whiten,' 
and  the  permanency  of  historic  lies  is  so  well  estab 
lished  that  one  may  readily  be  permitted  to  doubt 
the  wisdom  of  an  assault  on  fortifications  which 
seem  to  get  stronger  the  more  vigorously  they  are 
pounded.  Apart  from  the  feelings  of  the  blackened 
character  himself  and  his  immediate  friends  and 
descendants,  it  is  a  matter  of  little  consequence 
how  a  man  appears  on  the  page  of  history.  The 
great  celebrities,  the  great  '  shadows  of  names '  are 
typical  forms,  which  answer  rhetorical  and  so-called 
moral  purposes  perfectly,  and  the  popular  mind  will 
not  allow  itself  to  be  robbed  of  its  models.  The 
Richard  the  Third  of  the  people  is,  and  to  all  time 
will  be,  the  Richard  the  Third  of  Sir  Thomas  More 
and  Shakespeare,  and  not  the  attractive  young  gen 
tleman  depicted  by  Bulwer.  The  Tiberius  of  Tac 
itus  and  Suetonius  will  always  keep  down  the  real 


XANTHIPPE   AND  SOCRATES.  211 

Tiberius.     Gaius,  who  stepped  into  the  slippers  of 
his  great-uncle,  under  the  surname  of  Caligula  or 
Boots,  will  always  kick  out  the  real  Gaius  and  serve 
to  round  a  period  in  conjunction  with  Nero  and 
Caracalla.     And  yet  Tiberius  was  good  enough  for 
the  Romans  of  his  day  and  as  great  a  man  as  ever 
succeeded  Caesar ;  and  Caligula,  if  he  had  a  bee  in 
his  bonnet,  had  a  wasp  in  his  tongue,  and  showed 
an  intellect  of  brilliancy  so  penetrating  that  it  has 
dazed  most  of  his  historians.     But,  in  spite  of  all 
this,  we  are  against  any  change,  and  intend  on  occa 
sion  to  pepper  Tiberius  and  salt  Gaius  to  suit  the 
popular  taste.     And  aside  from  the  futility  of  the 
effort  to  dislodge  popular  idols  or  to  redeem  pop 
ular  abominations,  we  cannot  but  look  with  sus 
picion  on  the  whole  tendency  of  recent  apologetic 
literature.     It  is  either  sophistic  or  partisan.     Mr. 
Grote  uses  the  Athenians  as  a  bulwark  of  English 
Radicalism.  Mr.  Motley  delivers  his  Boston  humani- 
tarianism  from  behind  the  imposing  figure  of  Wil 
liam  the  Taciturn.     The  historic  grandeur  of  Caesar 
serves  as  a  clothes-horse  to  air  an  unwashen  set  of 
Napoleonic  ideas.     Or,  if  no  partisan  ends  are  to 
be  accomplished,  a  reputation  for  ingenuity  is  to  be 
gained   and  the   arts  employed  are  those   of  the 
ancient  sophist.    Now  nothing  pleased  your  ancient 
sophist   so  much   as  a  good  paradoxical   subject. 
Flies,  fever,  famine  furnished  favorite  themes  for 
sounding  panegyrics,  and  the  gout  by  reason  of  its 
very  difficulty  was  looked  upon  as  a  lovely  case  for 
encomium.     So  thoroughly  ingrained  was  this  itch 
of  display  that  the  sweet  and  swelling  Isocrates, 
whom  Milton — heaven  knows  why — has  called  'that 


212  XANTHIPPE  AND  SOCRATES. 

old  man  eloquent',  while  rebuking  a  novice  for 
attacking  Socrates  and  defending  Busiris,  must 
needs  show  how  much  better  himself  would  have 
done  the  job ;  and  on  another  occasion  actually 
devoted  a  considerable  time — for  he  was  the  most 
deliberate  of  writers — to  the  composition  of  a  frivo 
lous  encomium  of  Helen.  It  is  the  same  desire  of 
vainglory  that  prompts  men  now-a-days  to  like 
purifications  of  the  lepers  of  history,  and  the  old 
sophists,  who  extolled  such  fellows  as  Phalaris, 
would  have  recognized  a  kindred  spirit  in  the  grave 
divine  who  proved  that  Judas  Iscariot  was  a  mis 
taken  patriot — for  which,  by  the  way,  he  had  some 
scriptural  ground  in  the  statement  that  the  said 
'  Judas  was  a  thief.  In  short,  we  do  not  believe 
either  in  the  efficacy  or  in  the  honesty  of  the  modern 
process  of  deodorizing  unpleasant  reputations,  and 
we  hope  that  as  we  venture  into  the  charnel-house 
of  Xanthippe's  character,  this  protest  will  give  us 
some  little  credit  with  the  reader  for  an  earnest  pur 
pose  not  to  be  too  lavish  of  chloride  of  lime  and 
vinaigre  des  quatre  voleurs.  And  yet  Xanthippe 
needs  all  manner  of '  medicinal  gums '  to  make  her 
sweet,  for  of  all  the  women  of  classic  antiquity  she 
is  beyond  compare  the  most  notorious.  She  is 
known  where  Sappho  is  an  obscurity  and  Artemisia 
a  nonentity.  She  is  known  wherever  her  husband 
is,  and  it  is  not  unlikely  that  in  some  circles  Soc 
rates  is  known  as  the  husband  of  Xanthippe,  rather 
than  Xanthippe  as  the  wife  of  Socrates.  This 
unsavory  popularity  of  Xanthippe  is  attributed  by 
Zeller,  in  some  degree  at  least,  to  the  accident  that 
her  name  begins  with  X.  In  conveying  a  knowl- 


XANTHIPPE   AND   SOCRATES.  2 13 

edge  of  the  letters,  primers  proceed  on  the  principle 
of  the  Egyptian  hieroglyphics,  and  present  the  pic 
ture  of  an  object,  the  name  of  which  begins  with 
such  and  such  a  letter  of  the  alphabet — for  instance, 

A   was  an  archer  and  shot  at  a  frog, 
B   was  a  butcher  and  had  a  big  dog. 

Now  when  we  get  to  the  tail-end  of  the  Christ- 
Cross-Row,  the  choice  of  objects  is  limited,  and 
hence  the  appearance  of  such  otherwise  uncommon 
words  as  zany,  such  outlandish  beasts  as  the  zebra 
and  the  zebu,  and  such  diminutive  scriptural  char 
acters  as  Zaccheus ;  and  so  these  out-of-the-way 
words  are  lifted  up  and  their  horns  are  exalted,  just 
as  'pelf  has  been  saved  alive  because  it  rhymes 
with  'self,  and  the  red  '  levin '  has  not  been 
quenched  in  utter  midnight  because  it  makes  a 
jingle  with  '  heaven  '.  But  if  Z  is  bad,  X  is  a  per 
fect  cross.  Scan. the  dictionary  and  what  do  you 
find  ?  Xebec  and  xyster.  '  Xebec,  a  small  three- 
masted  vessel  navigated  in  the  Mediterranean.'  That 
will  never  do.  *  Xyster,  a  raspatory/  Worse  and 
worse.  Hence  recourse  must  be  had  to  proper 
names;  and  of  these  the  ancient  manufacturers  of 
primers  found  but  two  that  presented  themselves  in 
bold  relief.  One  of  them  is  Xerxes,  and  the  New 
England  Primer  has  handed  him  down  to  the  mem 
ory  of  the  sons  of  the  Pilgrims  in  the  impressive 
verses : 

Xerxes  the  Great  did  die, 
And  so  must  you  and  I.1 

1  So  I  learned  the  verses  when  a  child,  and  several  of  my 
contemporaries  confirm  me  in  maintaining  the  genuineness  of 
this  noble  form.  What  I  find  in  a  so-called  'oldest'  version, 
'  Xerxes  did  die,  And  so  must  I',  shows,  as  a  valued  friend 


214  XANTHIPPE   AND   SOCRATES. 

And  by  the  way,  this  lyric  outburst  suggests  the 
interesting  question  why  the  poet  of  the  primer,  not 
content  with  the  classic  allusion  to  the  celebrated 
review  at  which  Xerxes  wept  so  bitterly  over  the 
prospective  death  of  all  that  mighty  host,  why  he 
alone  of  high  authorities,  in  the  teeth  of  so  many 
cheapeners  of  Xerxes'  character,  should  have  called 
him  the  Great  ?  Was  it  to  show  that  he  knew  the 
official  title  of  the  Great  King  ?  Was  it  to  express 
his  contempt  for  all  human  greatness  by  attaching 
the  surname  to  Xerxes  ?  Was  it  because  Xerxes 
was  the  tallest  and  handsomest  man  in  that  immense 
armament  ?  Was  it  because  a  keener  insight  into 
the  soul  of  history  showed  the  New  England  scholar 
that  Xerxes  had  been  hardly  dealt  with  by  the  lying 
Greeks  ?  Or  was  it  because  Xerxes  had  come  to 
the  relief  of  the  author  at  that  critical  juncture  ? 
But  if  the  New  England  Primer  startles  us  by 
novelty  of  view,  the  ordinary  German  primers  are 
satisfied  to  transmit,  with  uncritical  simplicity,  the 
character  of  Xanthippe  as  depicted  in  the  chronique 
scandaleuse  of  ancient  times.  Here  is  one  of  the 
ribald  couplets : 

Xanthippe  was  a  shrewish  wife  : 
To  scold  was  her  delight  in  life.1 

has  pointed  out,  '  a  narrow  egoism  that  compares  unfavorably 
with  the  generous,  broad  "altruism"  of  the  other  version', 
and  is  evidently  the  Procrustean  work  of  a  miserable  unifor- 
mitarian  who  did  not  understand  the  swelling  of  the  voiceful 
line  in  correspondence  with  the  heroic  subject  of  the  distich 
and  in  marked  contrast  to  the  shrinking  of  the  couplet,  which 
happily  symbolizes  the  brevity  of  '  Zaccheus,  he '.  'Xerxes 
the  Great,  Shared  common  fate  '  is  a  contemptible  compro 
mise.— B.  L.  G. 

1  Xanthippe  war  em  boses  Weib, 
Der  Zank  war  ihr  ein  Zeitvertreib. 


XANTHIPPE   AND   SOCRATES.  21$ 

And  here  is  another  like  unto  it: 

Xanthippe  at  her  husband  thundered, 
X  times  X  makes  just  one  hundred.1 

But  how  did  Xanthippe  get  into  such  notoriety 
before  German  primers  were  heard  of?  Mainly,  of 
course,  by  the  agency  of  a  set  of  rascally  rhetoricians, 
who  delighted  in  the  brilliant  antithesis  of  the 
scolding  wife  and  the  serene  philosopher,  and  by 
the  help  of  gossiping  chroniclers  who  gathered  up 
all  manner  of  absurd  items  with  the  eagerness  of 
the  local  editors  of  our  day.  Whenever  one  of 
these  self-styled  philosophers  had  in  hand  a  little 
tractate  on  the  expediency  of  not  letting  one's  angry 
passions  rise,  Xanthippe  was  an  inevitable  figure. 
Whenever  anecdote-mongers  sorted  their  wares, 
Xanthippe  was  a  part  of  the  stock  in  trade.  Of 
course  there  must  have  been  some  foundation  for  the 
superstructure,  and  there  is  no  denying  that  Xan 
thippe  had  a  high  temper — but  doubtless  she  was 
no  worse  than  many  other  wives  who  have  escaped 
criticism.  There,  for  instance,  are  the  venerable 
consorts  of  the  patriarchs.  If  Xanthippe  was  a  less 
comfortable  person  than  Sarah,  we  are  totally  mis 
taken  in  our  divination  of  character.  Perhaps  she 
was  not  so  comely,  for  we  are  told  that  Sarah  was 
fair  to  look  upon — and  we  are  willing  to  concede 

1  Xanthippe  ihren  Mann  anfuhr, 

X  mal  X  macht  hundert  nur. 
Yet  another  reads : 

Schon  ist  es  lange  Mitternacht 
Da  sitzt  ein  Mann  und  schreibt  und  wacht, 
Sein  Weib  ist  zankisch  und  genau, 
Xanthippe  heisst  die  bose  Frau. 


2l6  XANTHIPPE   AND  SOCRATES. 

that  in  all  likelihood,  as  beauty  is  not  an  ordinary 
gift,  Xanthippe  did  not  deserve  to  play  a  part  in 
any  Vision  of  Fair  Women.  Yet  why  must  she 
have  been  ugly?  We  have  absolutely  no  evidence 
on  the  subject,  and  on  this  point  popular  prejudice 
is  against  her  in  despite  of  the  doctrine  of  chances. 
Abstractly  considered,  it  is  not  as  likely  that  she 
should  have  been  both  cross  and  ugly,  as  that  she 
should  have  had  one  of  these  defects ;  and  if  she 
had  combined  the  two,  the  gossips  would  not  have 
failed  to  discuss  the  question  '  whether  Xanthippe 
was  the  greater  scold  or  the  greater  scare-crow  ?  ' 
That  she  was  beautiful  we  do  not  maintain,  and  yet 
we  cannot  allow  Zeller  to  sneer  at  her  appearance 
by  hinting  that  Socrates  did  not  model  his  statues 
of  the  Three  Graces — if  they  were  his — after  the 
physical  proportions  of  his  wife.  Verily  the  recent 
German  is  not  a  whit  less  prejudiced  than  the  old 
Italian  professor,  grandfather  of  the  famous  Socinus. 
This  gentleman,  a  distinguished  jurisconsult  of 
Siena,  took  unto  himself  a  wife,  and  thereupon 
discontinued  his  lectures ;  and  when  his  friends 
remonstrated  with  him  and  urged  the  example  of 
Socrates,  who  had  never  deserted  philosophy  for 
his  spouse, he  replied  that  Socrates  had  in  Xanthippe 
a  vixen,  and  perhaps  a  fright,  whereas  he  had  a 
pretty  and  obliging  bride.  And  so  the  world  runs 
away,  and,  in  sheer  wantonness,  the  charge  of 
infidelity  has  been  added  to  the  grievous  sin  of 
ugliness,  and  poor  Xanthippe  has  become  an  epitome 
of  all  the  defects  and  vices  of  womankind.  Of  this 
popular  view,  Dominicus  Baudius  gave  perhaps  the 
most  extravagant  expression,  when  he  said  that  it 


XANTHIPPE   AND  SOCRATES. 

was  a  deed  of  charity  in  the  Athenians  to  release 
Socrates  from  such  wedlock  by  hemlock.  But 
Dominic  is  sufficiently  punished  for  this  flippant 
speech,  in  that  it  calls  the  attention  of  people  to  his 
worthless  self,  otherwise  happily  forgotten ;  and  an 
inspection  of  Peter  Bayle's  rag-bag  of  bad  characters 
shows  us  that  the  frivolous  and  vicious  Dutchman 
was  not  worthy  even  of  a  Xanthippe. 

Pereat  Dominicus, 
Quivis  Antixanthippus 
Atque  irrisores. 

On  nearly  every  important  point  that  would  aid 
us  in  understanding  the  relations  of  Xanthippe  to 
her  husband,  we  are  without  satisfactory  informa 
tion.  Given,  Xanthippe  a  vile  shrew,  and  Socrates 
a  great  oddity — what  can  we  do  with  such  unsatis 
factory  data  ?  Let  us  see.  In  the  first  place  we 
should  like  to  know  something  about  Xanthippe's 
origin.  It  is  in  our  opinion  not  unlikely  that  she 
was  of  gentle  blood,  if  of  ungentle  temper.  Her 
name  has  a  Clara  Vere  de  Vere  sound  about  it. 
Another  Xanthippe,  a  descendant  of  Periander,  has 
had  her  name  embalmed  in  an  epitaph  by  Simon- 
ides.  Xanthippus  was  the  victor  of  Mycale — the 
father  of  Pericles.  Indeed,  names  compounded 
with  hippos  'horse'  were  regarded  as  aristocratic  in 
Athens,  perhaps  because  of  an  early  religious  con 
nection  with  Poseidon,  to  whom  the  horse  was 
sacred,  and  who  preceded  Athena  in  the  guardian 
ship  of  the  city.  It  was  as  if  an  English  family 
were  to  go  back  beyond  the  Norman  conquest  and 
base  its  claims  on  the  invasion  of  Hengist  and 
Horsa.  Pisistratus  called  two  of  his  sons  Hippias 


2l8  XANTHIPPE   AND   SOCRATES. 

and  Hipparchus,  and  Callias,  the  rich  Athenian, 
called  his  heir  Hipponicus.  So  in  the  Clouds  of 
Aristophanes,  when  Strepsiades  (Twist),  who  is  the 
original  of  Moliere's  George  Dandin,  has  a  son 
born  to  him,  his  aristocratic  wife,  'a  Megacles  of 
that  ilk  ',  insists  that  the  baby  be  named 

Xanthippus  or  Chaerippus  or  Callippides. 

Now  names  of  women  like  the  names  of  men  were 
handed  down  from  generation  to  generation,  and  it 
is  not  impossible  that  Xanthippe  was  remotely  con 
nected  with  the  great  family  of  which  Pericles  is  the 
most  conspicuous  representative.  The  shabby-gen 
teel  is  quite  a  noticeable  element  in  the  stories 
current  about  this  poor  lady,  and  we  shall  see  pres 
ently  how  ill-matched  she  was  in  this  very  respect. 
Like  the  wife  of  Strepsiades,  however,  she  carried 
her  point  in  naming  the  first  boy,  who  bore  the 
grand  name  Lamprocles.  Of  the  others,  one  was 
called  after  his  grandfather  Sophroniscus  ;  the  other, 
Menexenus,  perhaps  after  a  disciple  of  Socrates. 
Certainly  Xanthippe's  conduct  can  be  more  readily 
understood  if  we  conceive  her  as  the  impoverished 
scion  of  a  great  stock,  forced  to  submit  to  a  union 
with  a  good-for-nothing  stone-scraper,  whose 
mother  was  a  midwife. 

Another  question  to  be  considered  is  her  age.  In 
the  Phaedo  of  Plato  she  is  represented  as  having  a 
baby  in  her  arms.  This  statement  shows  that  she  must 
have  been  considerably  younger  than  her  husband, 
who  was  about  seventy  at  the  time  of  his  death,  and 
the  difference  in  their  ages  cannot  have  been  much 
less  than  twenty-five  years.  Her  oldest  son  Lam- 


XANTHIPPE  AND  SOCRATES.  2 19 

procles  is  spoken  of  in  the  Socratic  Apology  of 
Plato  in  such  a  way  as  to  show  that  he  was  not  fully 
grown  at  that  period,  so  that  in  all  probability  So 
crates  did  not  marry  until  he  was  turned  of  fifty.  A 
further  confirmation  of  this  is  the  silence  of  Aris 
tophanes  in  the  '  Clouds '.  If  Socrates  had  married 
his  vixen  before  423,  the  date  of  the  Clouds,  Aris 
tophanes  would  not  have  failed  to  drag  Mrs. 
Socrates  on  the  stage,  or  at  all  events  would  have 
made  infinite  mirth  of  the  hen-pecked  philosopher. 
But  perhaps  too  much  stress  is  not  to  be  laid  on 
this  argument  from  silence.  Xanthippe  may  not 
have  developed  her  latent  capacities,  or,  for  aught 
we  know,  the  domestic  relations  of  Socrates  may 
have  furnished  Aristophanes  with  one  of  the  traits 
of  Strepsiades,  to  which  we  have  already  adverted. 
Such  a  distribution  would  not  be  foreign  to  the  per 
versity  of  the  comic  muse.  Still  we  incline  after 
profound  reflection  to  the  opinion  that  Socrates  was 
not  married  until  some  years  after  the  representa 
tion  of  the  '  Clouds ';  partly,  as  already  intimated, 
on  account  of  the  age  of  Lamprocles,  partly  on 
account  of  another  circumstance,  of  which  no  pre 
vious  investigation  has  given  a  satisfactory  explana 
tion,  and  that  is,  the  comparative  mildness  of  Ari 
stophanes  towards  Socrates  in  his  later  comedies. 
The  comic  poet  was  not  a  bad  fellow  at  heart  and 
was  sorry  for  the  ill-wived  philosopher:  a  poor 
explanation  on  our  own  theory,  but  as  good  a  one 
as  the  elaborate  hypotheses  of  recent  writers. 

The  great  difference  in  age  is  clear ;  that  Socrates 
married  late  in  life  is  clear;  but  neither  of  these 
clearnesses  helps  us  to  light  on  the  age  of  Xanthippe 


22O  XANTHIPPE   AND  SOCRATES. 

at  the  time  of  her  marriage.  She  may  have  been 
sixteen,  she  may  have  been  twenty-five.  The  latter 
age  was  regarded  by  the  Greeks  as  over-mature, 
and  Xanthippe's  match  looks  very  much  like  a 
match  of  despair.  A  portionless  old  girl  had  very 
little  chance  among  that  people  and  at  that  time. 
For  in  the  Peloponnesian  War  even  sweet  sixteen 
was  at  a  discount.  If  Xanthippe  was  married  at  the 
end  of  the  period  known  as  the  Ten- Years  War,  it 
is  not  unlikely  that  she  was  an  old  maid,  as  the 
matrimonial  market  began  to  be  brisker  and  the 
men  less  scarce ;  and  it  is  not  difficult  to  divine  her 
feelings  when  we  think  of  the  sore  misfortune  for  a 
young  lady  of  the  South  to  have  been  born  a  suffic 
ient  number  of  years  before  the  war  to  diminish 
seriously  her  chances  of  matrimony  after  the  war. 
But  young  or  old,  Xanthippe  might  have  consoled 
herself;  for  a  few  years  afterwards  things  got  even 
worse,  and  the  later  comedies  of  Aristophanes  point 
to  a  dire  paucity  of  husbands.1  So  in  the  Lysi- 
strata,  which  was  acted  in  the  year  411,  after  the 
dreadful  Sicilian  catastrophe,  and  in  a  miserable 
'  muddle '  of  matters  generally,  the  lady  who  gives 
her  name  to  the  piece  is  introduced  as  holding  con 
verse  with  one  of  the  committee  of  public  safety, 
somewhat  after  this  fashion  : 

LYS.     And  then  when  we  wives  ought  to  have  a  good  time  and 

enjoy  our  youth  in  its  flower 
We  lie  all  alone  on  account  of  the  war  ;  but  don't  bother 

your  noddles  on  our  score, 
'Tis  the  girls  that  I'm  vex'd  for,  to  see  them  grow  old 

and  pine  away  in  their  chambers. 
P.  S.    But  do  not  the  men  grow  old  as  well  ? 

1  Comp.  Thesm.  410,  in  which  old  men  are  considered  better 
than  no  husbands  at  all. 


XANTHIPPE   AND   SOCRATES.  221 

LYS.  Nay,  that  is  a  different  matter, 

A  man  comes  along  as  old  as  the  hills  and  he  snaps  up 

a  fresh  young  creature  j 
But  the  season  of  woman  is  very  brief,  and  unless  she 

seize  on  it  quickly, 
Not  a  soul  will  have  her;  she's  left  to  read  all  the  rest 

of  her  days — Dr.  Gumming.1 

Young  or  old,  in  view  of  the  dearth  of  men,  Xan 
thippe  may  have  congratulated  herself  on  attaining 
what  the  Greeks  considered,  and  what  too  many  in 
modern  times  consider,  the  aim  of  a  woman's  being. 
As  a  certain  one  also  of  their  own  poets  hath  said : 

In  failing  of  a  husband,  woman  fails  of  life. 

But  the  drollest  of  husbands  fell  to  her  lot,  and 
she  may  well  have  been  discontented,  as  the  inti 
macy  of  married  life  revealed  more  and  more  the 
peculiarities  of  this  strange  man.  Let  us  abstract 
for  a  while  from  the  historic  fame  of  Socrates,  from 
his  transfigured  image,  as  seen  in  the  Platonic 
poems.  Let  us  try  to  see  the  Socrates  of  Xanthippe 
as  he  appeared  before  the  final  light  of  his  memo 
rable  death  shone  back  on  his  past  career,  illumined 
the  unseen  depths  of  his  character,  and  softened  into 
beauty  and  warmed  into  loveliness  much  that  was 
harsh  and  repulsive. 

To  begin  with  externals.  Living  as  he  did  in  the 
midst  of  the  handsomest  of  the  sons  of  men,  Soc 
rates  was  the  ugliest  of  the  sons  of  men.  No  face 
more  famous,  none  better  known;  not  Alexander's, 

1  Gumming,  the  apocalyptic  preacher  of  1867,  belongs  to 
ancient  history  as  much  as  Socrates.  This  shows  the  danger 
of  translations  with  reference  to  current  events.  So  Droysen 
found  it  necessary  to  annotate  his  rendering  of  Aristophanes  as 
if  that  had  been  the  original. — B.  L.  G. 


222  XANTHIPPE   AND   SOCRATES. 

not  Caesar's,  not  the  numerous  representations  of 
the  beautiful  Antinous.  In  the  most  crowded  gal 
lery  he  is  to  be  identified  at  a  glance.  Who  does 
not  know  the  bald  pate  with  its  fringe  of  bristly 
hair,  the  lobster  eyes,  the  bridgeless  nose,  which 
tries  to  redeem  its  flatness  by  a  superb  development 
of  nostril,  the  thickly  padded  mouth  ?  Every  linea 
ment  speaks  of  a  coarse,  passionate,  animal  nature  ; 
and  the  standing  comparison  with  Silenus  does 
injustice  not  to  Socrates  but  to  Silenus — for  the 
Silenus  type  is  milder.  Such  an  exceeding  weight 
of  ugliness  in  her  husband  was,  beyond  a  doubt,  a 
grievous  burden  to  Xanthippe,  and  would  be  a 
burden  to  any  modern  wife,  despite  our  advanced 
views  on  the  subject  of  male  looks.  Beauty  was 
regarded  among  the  Greeks,  and  for  that  matter 
among  the  Old  Testament  Hebrews  likewise,  as  the 
only  proper  incitement  of  love  ;  and  the  utilitarian 
argument,  which  one  of  the  admirers  of  Socrates 
put  into  the  mouth  of  his  hero,  would  find  now,  as 
it  found  then,  but  little  response.  The  eyes  might 
see  the  better  for  protruding,  the  nostrils  might 
smell  the  better  for  expanding  freely,  the  mouth 
kiss  the  more  softly  for  its  cushioned  amplitude, 
but  popular  prejudice  was,  and  still  is,  in  favor  of 
eyes  that  keep  to  their  sockets,  modest  nostrils 
and  normal  mouths.  Nor  was  the  ugliness  of  Soc 
rates  .redeemed  by  any  grace  of  carriage  or  comeli 
ness  of  figure.  Sturdy  and  vigorous  enough  he 
was,  but  protuberant  of  paunch  and  bandy-legged, 
and  his  gait  seems  to  have  been  peculiarly  absurd  ; 
and  as  that  gait  is  described  in  the  Clouds  by  a 
word  which  is  supposed  to  be  derived  from  an 


XANTHIPPE   AND   SOCRATES.  22$ 

unknown  water-fowl,  we  are  left  to  imagine  some 
ineffable  extravagance  of  movement,  some  unutter 
able  resultant  of  pride  and  awkwardness,  such  as 
many  aquatic  birds  exhibit  when  they  disport  them 
selves  on  land. 

Nor  did  Socrates  attempt  to  redeem  his  want  of 
comeliness  by  attention  to  his  attire.  He  was 
always  meanly  clad ;  indeed  so  meanly  clad  as  to 
attract  attention  even  in  a  city  where  the  poorer 
classes  were  not  to  be  distinguished  in  their  dress 
from  the  slaves.  And  his  shoelessness  was  pro 
verbial,  for  in  that  part  of  Greece  going  barefoot  in 
the  streets  was  regarded  as  evincing  either  great 
poverty  or  great  affectation.  Simple  in  their  tastes 
as  the  Athenians  were,  they  had  to  draw  a  line 
somewhere,  and  they  drew  it  there ;  and  as  the 
modern  French  test  of  gentility  is  to  be  bien  gante 
et  bien  botte,  so  the  ancient  Athenians  insisted  that  a 
gentleman  should  wear  shoes  out  of  doors.  This 
Socrates  rarely  did,  summer  or  winter,  and  thus 
provoked  the  wrath  of  the  Greek  St.  Crispin,  who 
ever  he  was,  and  brought  Anytus,  the  leather- 
dresser,  about  his  ears.  But  not  to  dwell  too  long 
on  the  mere  outside  of  the  '  unwashen  '  philosopher, 
as  he  was  called,  let  us  investigate  some  of  his  ways, 
which  were  even  worse  than  his  looks.  He  was 
indeed  an  oddity  beyond  the  risk  of  a  parallel. 
His  trances,  for  instance,  made  him  appear  not 
unfrequently  little  better  than  a  lunatic,  and  a 
modern  Xanthippe  would  have  had  him  housed  in 
an  asylum  for  the  insane  without  any  further  ado. 
At  such  times  he  could  not  have  been  an  agreeable 
inmate,  standing  as  he  would  for  hours  together 


224  '     XANTHIPPE   AND  SOCRATES. 

staring  at  vacancy  and  meditating  on  the  self-good, 
the  self  beautiful  and  the  self-true.  A  husband 
with  fits  is  not  a  comfortable  companion;  but  worse 
than  occasional  fits  is  chronic  laziness.  And  work 
he  would  not  except  in  some  spasmodic  way.  He 
was  an  idler  and  lounger,  a  busybody  in  other  men's 
matters  and  strenuously  negligent  of  his  own ;  so 
that  Eupolis,  the  comic  poet,  reflected  the  common 
opinion  of  many  a  worthy  Athenian  when  he  said  : 

I  hate  him,  too,  that  Socrates,  that  prating,  jabbering  beggar  ; 

So  very  thoughtful  of  all  things  else, 

But  whence  he  shall  get  his  bread  to  eat,  neglecting  altogether. 

What  progress  he  made  in  the  sculptor's  art  we 
have  no  means  of  telling.  The  Three  Graces  are 
attributed  to  him  on  but  doubtful  authority  at  best ; 
and  it  is  unlikely  that  he  ever  handled  a  chisel  after 
he  got  the  missionary  mania  into  his  head.  Now, 
though  the  Greeks  had  a  high  and  mighty  way  of 
looking  down  on  all  handicrafts,  a  way  which  they 
carried  so  far  as  to  depreciate  even  their  greatest 
artists,  the  Greek  housewives  were  hardly  indifferent 
to  the  idleness  of  their  husbands,  when  they  had  a 
trade;  and  Xanthippe,  if  indeed  she  was  of  a  noble 
family,  must  have  been  much  chagrined  at  finding 
that  she  had  married  not  only  an  artisan,  but  an 
artisan  whom  scarcely  any  stress  of  circumstance 
would  force  to  work.  How  often  may  not  Soc 
rates  have  heard  from  the  mouth  of  his  disappointed 
and  soured  wife  such  wise  saws  as  this: 

Unless  you  thresh  and  grind  your  corn,  you  shall  not  eat. 

Or  this : 

A  harbor  from  disaster  is  a  handicraft. 


XANTHIPPE   AND   SOCRATES.  22$ 

•r 

How  he  made  his  bread  no  one  knows.  Any 
assistance  from  outside  sources  is  unlikely,  from  the 
character  of  the  man ;  any  considerable  assistance 
is  not  to  be  admitted  in  view  of  his  own  declaration 
that  he  was  steeped  in  fathomless  penury.  Mali 
cious  tradition  points  to  some  operations  in  the 
brokerage  business,  by  which  he  lost  his  patri 
mony  ;  and  once  in  that  way  of  speculation  he  may 
have  acquired  a  fondness  for  it,  as  philosophers  and 
divines  have  done  since.1  True,  it  did  not  require 
much  to  keep  soul  and  body  together  in  Athens. 
When  Archelaus  of  Macedon  held  out  to  Socrates 
considerable  inducements  to  join  his  literary  court- 
circle,  Socrates  is  said  to  have  replied,  '  Four 
measures  of  flour  are  sold  at  Athens  for  an  obolus, 
and  water  is  to  be  had  for  nothing.'  An  obolus  is 
three  cents  (gold),  the  measure  mentioned  (the 
chcenix)  is  a  quart,  which  was  the  daily  ration  of  a 
slave,  so  that  two  or  three  oboli  a  day  (a  sum  which 
so  many  Athenians  picked  up  for  their  attendance 
on  the  public  courts)  would  have  fed  a  small  family 
after  a  fashion.  But  according  to  the  reported 
statement  of  Socrates  at  his  trial,  his  floating  capital 
only  amounted  to  a  mina,  or  six  hundred  oboli,  or 
if  we  accept  Boeckh's  calculation,  to  not  more  than 
two  minae,  so  that  he  could  not  have  made  both 
ends  meet  by  '  shaving  paper'  at  thirty-six  per  cent, 
a  high  but  not  unheard  of  rate;  and  even  as  a 
'  curbstone  broker ',  he  would  hardly  have  been  as 

1  There  is  possibly  some  confusion  here.  Another  Socrates, 
'  the  banker  ',  is  mentioned  by  Dem.  pro  Phonnioiie  28,  as  the 
father-in-law  of  Pasion  and  was  probably  a  close  contemporary 
of  the  philosopher.  — B.  L.  G. 


226  XANTHIPPE   AND   SOCRATES. 

successful  as  the  man  in  Theophrastus,  who  asks 
twenty-five  per  cent  a  day,  and  scholars  have  found 
more  trouble  in  supporting  Socrates'  income  return 
than  Socrates  himself  found  in  supporting  his 
family. 

In  any  case,  his  was  a  very  shiftless  life,  and  the 
fare  exceedingly  meagre;  and  then  we  must  re 
member  that  Xanthippe  was  very  often  left  alone 
to  her  dry  victuals,  while  Socrates  dined  out ;  and 
of  course  on  such  occasions  she  felt  as  bitterly  as 
any  modern  wife  would  feel — and  how  bitterly 
modern  wives  feel  is  shown  by  various  feminine 
deliverances  against  clubs.  At  the  houses  of  the 
elegant  acquaintances  of  Socrates,  as  for  instance 
at  Crito's  house,  the  rich  Athenian  dilettante  in 
philosophy,  the  menu  was  not  so  simple  as  in  the 
hovel  of  Socrates,  and  wine  flowed  freely.  Now  we 
do  not  doubt  the  temperance  of  Socrates,  which 
rests  on  the  most  indisputable  evidence ;  but  when 
Socrates  came  home  in  the  morning  watches,  what 
woman  would  not  have  suspected,  what  woman  of 
classic  antiquity  would  not  have  been  envious  ? 
For  the  ladies  of  that  time  were  given  to  drink ;  it 
was  one  of  the  pet  vices  of  their  sex  ;  and  we  need 
not  stop  to  prove  this  by  the  testimony  of  the 
ancients,  especially  as  Young  America  is  beginning 
to  rival  Old  Greece  in  this  regard,  and  New  York 
milliners  are  said  to  drive  a  more  thriving  trade 
in  liquors  than  in  laces.1  So,  then,  to  come  in 
reeking  with  Chian  wine,  while  his  poor  wife  was 
condemned  to  drink  water,  was  an  insult  which  he 
only  heightened  by  his  praise  of  thin  potations. 

1  This  scandal,  very  current  in  1867.  has  been  recently  re 
vived.  — B.  L.  G. 


XANTHIPPE   AND   SOCRATES.  22/ 

Another  trouble  which  Xanthippe  had  to  encoun 
ter  came  from  the  friends  and  aquaintances  of 
Socrates.  Some  of  them  were  noisy  and  dissipated 
characters.  So,  for  instance,  that  graceless  scamp 
Alcibiades,  who  was  an  especial  eye-sore  to  her  for 
more  reasons  that  one,  as  we  shall  see.  Then  there 
was  Apollodorus,surnamed  the  madman,  who  foamed 
and  fumed  at  everything  and  everybody  except 
Socrates.  Another  was  Chaerephon,  the  Boswell 
of  the  Athenian  Dr.  Johnson.  It  was  Chaerephon  that 
Aristophanes  selected  as  thefamu/us  of  his  Socrates ; 
Chaerephon  'the  Bat/  a  fussy,  meddling  half-student, 
half-politician,  another  disagreeable  character  that 
Plato  and  Xenophon  have  seen  fit  to  gloze  over. 
Then,  if  Xanthippe  had  any  lingering  aristocratic 
notions,  it  must  have  been  exceedingly  unpleasant 
to  her  to  have  Socrates  bring  in  his  especial  pet, 
Simon  the  cordwainer,  who  turned  philosopher 
after  his  master's  death,  and  cobbled  Socratic 
dialogues  as  he  Had  never  cobbled  Socratic  shoes. 
Xenophon  was  beyond  a  doubt  an  especial  bore  to 
the  good  woman,  as  he  is  to  most  people  now-a- 
days,  though  scholars  from  silly  weakness  are  afraid 
to  acknowledge  it ;  and  her  dislike  must  have  been 
very  much  enhanced  by  the  political  views  of  that 
insufferable  prig ;  for  if  it  is  not  demonstrably  certain, 
it  is  very  likely,  that  Xanthippe's  politics  were  the 
reverse  of  those  of  her  husband's  friend,  Xenophon, 
that  degenerate,  ungrateful  son  of  Athens.  Xanthippe 
as  a  woman,  and  as  a  woman  of  quick  feelings,  was 
patriotic,  and  her  patriotism,  as  it  was  female  patri 
otism,  consisting  in  adoring  Athens  and  despising 
Sparta,  she  must  have  loathed  Xenophon's  and,  we 


228  XANTHIPPE   AND   SOCRATES. 

are  sorry  to  say  it,  Socrates'  coquetry  with  the 
principles  of  the  Lacedaemonians.  When  Xenophon 
went  on  his  filibustering  expedition  with  the  younger 
Cyrus,  little  word  of  cheer  had  she  for  him,  and 
Xenophon  in  his  turn  was  careful  to  record  Xan 
thippe's  peculiar  traits,  not  by  way  of  revenge — Oh, 
no  ! — but  in  the  service  of  the  high  moralities.  Of 
course  we  are  aware  that  such  an  interest  in  politics 
as  we  have  attributed  to  Xanthippe  will  seem  an 
anachronism  to  those  who  have  formed  their  concep 
tion  of  the  life  of  Greek  women  from  convenient 
manuals.  Politics,  it  is  commonly  supposed,  were 
left  to  men  and  to  a  few  '  emancipated '  ladies,  but, 
as  we  may  have  occasion  to  see  hereafter,  the 
fashionable  view  is  entirely  too  narrow ;  and  to  think 
that  a  woman  of  so  ardent  a  temperament  as  was 
Xanthippe  should  have  lived  in  and  through  such 
a  time  of  revolution  as  the  Peloponnesian  war  with 
out  canvassing  matters  which  were  life  and  death  to 
the  whole  community,  is  simply  absurd  in  the  light 
of  our  recent  experience.  What  Xanthippe's  view 
of  Plato  was  we  cannot  so  easily  conjecture.  While 
his  connection  by  blood  with  some  of  the  principal 
actors  in  the  Reign  of  Terror  was  not  much  in  his 
favor,  she  probably  looked  upon  him  as  a  simple 
youth  addicted  to  poetry  and  sentiment,  and  it  is 
hard  to  tell  whether  Plato's  reticence  with  regard 
to  Xanthippe  is  spiteful  or  not.  But  of  all  her 
visitors,  or  rather  of  all  the  visitors  of  her  husband, 
Connus  must  have  been  the  most  exasperating. 
Socrates,  it  appears,  took  into  his  crotchety  head  at 
an  over-mature  age  to  learn  music  and  dancing,  and 
for  his  instructor  in  the  former  art  he  selected  this 


XANTHIPPE   AND   SOCRATES.  22g 

Connus,  a  broken-down  maestro  who  had  once 
enjoyed  great  celebrity  as  a  composer,  and  was 
suffering  at  that  time  an  almost  equal  celebrity  as 
an  idiot.  With  Chaerephon  in  one  corner  of  the 
little  hut  and  Connus  in  another  and  Socrates  in  the 
middle  of  the  room  tuning  his  ancient  pipes,  the 
spouse  of  the  philosopher  must  have  had  a  hard  time 
of  it,  and  we  cannot  blame  her  very  severely  if  she 
vented  her  spleen  occasionally  on  poor  little  Lam- 
procles,  her  first-born.1 

But  now  that  we  are  on  the  chapter  of  the  friends 
of  Socrates,  we  must  not  omit  to  mention  one  breach 
of  the  minor  morals  of  married  life  with  which 
Socrates  is  chargeable  according  to  the  accounts  of 
his  own  admirers ;  and  this  leads  us  to  the  examina 
tion  of  a  group  of  stories  which  may  as  well  be 
discussed  here,  once  for  all.  Socrates — if  the  tradi 
tion  is  true — had  a  way  of  inviting  friends  to  take 
pot-luck  with  him,  to  the  infinite  chagrin  of  Xan 
thippe,  who  being,  as  we  have  established  (by 
divination),  of  a  genteel  family,  liked  to  keep  up 
appearances.  How  she  felt  on  such  occasions  may 
be  gathered  from  the  annoyance  which  she  showed 
when  Socrates  announced  to  her  that  he  had  in 
vited  some  of  the  capitalists  of  Athens  to  a  little 
dinner ;  and  small  comfort  to  her  was  it  when  he 

1  It  appears  from  Plato,  Euthyd.  272  c,  that  Socrates  did  not 
take  private  lessons  of  Connus,  but  joined  a  cheap  cithern 
class,  for  Connus  was  a  citharist.  Still  he  must  have  practised 
music  at  home,  for  we  know  from  Xenophon  that  he  practised 
dancing  at  home,  as  an  anticipated  Swedish  movement  cure,  and 
he  doubtless  received  visits  from  Connus.  At  all  events  I  have 
not  the  courage  to  remove  from  the  text  a  picture  that  has 
given  me  comfort  in  lonely  hours. — B.  L.  G. 


230  XANTHIPPE   AND   SOCRATES. 

told  her  that  if  they  were  moderate  men  (gentlemen) 
they  would  put  up  with  the  fare ;  if  they  were  trifling 
fellows  (sons  of  Belial),  it  made  no  difference. 
Perfectly  true  and  perfectly  philosophical ;  but  like 
so  many  things  that  are  both  true  and  philosophical, 
perfectly  unsatisfactory.  Now  if  this  was  bad  enough, 
what  is  to  be  said  of  his  asking  off-hand  such 
luxurious  young  fellows  as  Alcibiades  to  luncheon  ? 
But  we  doubt  the  story,  and  are  half  inclined  at  once 
to  acquit  Socrates  of  the  bad  habit  attributed  to  him, 
and  also  Xanthippe  of  shrewish  demeanor. 

Let  us  subject  our  authorities  to  a  little  sifting. 
The  first  on  the  witness-stand  is  one  Teles.  Teles 
was  a  contemporary  of  Aristotle's,  and  as  he  is  not 
so  very  far  removed  from  the  times  of  Socrates 
himself,  he  ought  to  be  tolerable  authority.  We  do 
not  altogether  like  the  cast  of  his  features.  He  is 
evidently  given  to  moralizing,  and  we  distrust  all 
such  personages.  But  let  us  listen  to  his  story  first, 
and  inquire  into  his  character  afterwards.  The  tale 
is  told,  and  not  very  daintily,  in  an  extract  from  his 
dialogue  '  On  Contentedness  ',  which  is  preserved  by 
one  Jack  Stubbs,  who  was  born  a  few  centuries  too 
soon  and  christened  Johannes  Stobaeus.  We  will 
modernize  it  a  little. 

Alcibiades  was  brought  in  one  day  by  Socrates 
to  breakfast  or  luncheon,  or  however  we  may  best 
translate  the  manger  sur  le  police  of  the  Greek. 
Xanthippe  came  in  and  upset  the  table,  and  Teles 
implies  that  she  did  it  purposely,  and  compliments 
Socrates  on  his  refraining  from  loud  outcries  and 
ejaculatory  indignation.  Upset  the  table!  Yes, 
but  what  sort  of  a  table  ?  It  was  a  light  frame-work, 


XANTHIPPE   AND   SOCRATES.  231 

which  they  in  no  wise  called  a  table  (tabula,  plank), 
but  a  four-legged  thing  (trapezd)  little  bigger  than 
a  chair.  Such  '  fancy '  tables  were  theirs  as  we  see 
snugly  packed  in  nests  in  the  corners  of  drawing- 
rooms,  intended  for  timid  gentlemen  or  careful  dow 
agers  who  do  not  desire  to  be  scalded  by  their  tea 
or  greased  by  the  butter  of  their  bread.  Such 
tables,  we  maintain  from  vast  experience,  are  more 
easily  knocked  over  than  not.  But  long  practice 
seems  to  have  made  the  Athenians  dexterous  in  the 
use  of  these  abominable  substitutes  for  the  hospi 
table  board ;  and  accident  or  no  accident,  Alcibiades 
was  very  much  shocked.  He  got  into  a  fit  of  the 
sulks  and  stayed  there,  the  said  sulks  being  mani 
fested  by  burying  himself  in  the  fplds  of  his  cloak. 
Thus  enveloped,  he  resisted  the  blandishments  of 
Socrates,  who  picked  up  the  breakfast  things  and 
bade  his  young  friend  fall  to.  '  Well,  then ',  said 
Socrates,  '  let  us  be  off.  Xanthippe  is  in  one  of  her 
bad  humors,  and  she  will  be  for  bespattering  us 
with  her  oxyrhegmia.'  Oxyrhegmia  !  it  is  a  dread 
ful  word.  It  sounds  badly  enough  in  Greek  and 
even  worse  in  English,  and  means  that  Xanthippe's 
temper  had  soured  on  her  stomach,  and  that  she 
was  about  to  give  them  the  benefit  of  her  indiges 
tion.  O  Teles !  if  thou  speakest  truly,  Socrates 
deserved  another  drench  of  foul  water  over  that 
bald  pate  of  his.  Oxyrhegmia  indeed  !  So  the  two 
companions  went  off  and  had  a  good  time  some 
where  else,  leaving  Madame  Xanthippe  to  take 
whatever  stomachic  was  most  in  vogue  among  the 
Athenian  ladies  of  that  day.  A  few  days  after 
wards  Socrates  was  breakfasting  with  Alcibiades. 


232  XANTHIPPE   AND   SOCRATES. 

A  game-hen  flew  on  the  table  while  they  were  at 
this  social  meal  and  upset  their  dish.  Socrates 
mimicked  Alcibiades,  enveloped  himself  in  his 
cloak  and  refused  to  be  comforted.  Thereupon 
ensues  an  unsavory  comparison  between  Xanthippe 
on  the  one  hand  and  a  crazy  hen  and  mad  sow  on 
the  other — a  comparison,  we  must  admit,  very  much 
in  the  Socratic  vein. 

Now  before  we  pass  over  to  another  version  of 
the  same  story,  let  us  fulfil  our  threat  of  examining 
a  little  more  closely  the  credibility  of  our  wit 
ness  Teles.  If  there  is  anything  famous  in  the  later 
reactionary  movements  at  the  close  of  the  Pelopon- 
nesian  War,  it  is  the  jaunty  death  of  Theramenes. 
This  shifty  gentleman,  when  his  last  shift  had  been 
shifted,  and  his  enemy  and  colleague  Critias  had 
brought  him  to  a  full  stop,  jerked  out  the  heeltap  of 
his  hemlock  negus  on  the  floor,  in  imitation  of  the 
practice  of  the  jolly  topers  of  his  time,  and  said  as 
if  pledging  a  favorite,  '  Here's  to  my  sweetheart, 
Critias  ';  or  as  Grote  has  translated  it,  in  utter  point- 
lessness,  '  Let  this  be  for  the  gentle  Kritias  '.  Such 
bravado  will  be  judged  accordirig  to  the  tempera 
ment  of  the  reader.  Some  will  admire,  some  con 
demn.1  But  all  will  admit  that  it  would  have  been 
out  of  keeping  with  the  serious  serenity  of  Socrates 
in  his  dying  hour  to  make  use  of  a  second-hand 
triviality  of  this  sort,  and  yet  Teles  quietly  dove 
tails  the  celebrated  story  of  Theramenes,  as  told  by 

1  Toute  plaisanterie  dans  un  homme  mourant  est  hors  de  sa 
place ;  si  elle  roule  sur  de  certains  chapitres,  elle  est  fimeste. 
C'est  une  extreme  misere  que  de  donner  a  ses  depens  a  ceux 
que  Ton  laisse  le  plaisir  d'un  bon  mot. — La  Bruyere. 


XANTHIPPE   AND  SOCRATES.  233 

Xenophon,  into  the  immortal  description  in  the 
Phaedo,  substitutes  Socrates  for  Theramenes,  Alci- 
biades  for  Critias,  and  virtually  palms  off  the  whole 
on  Plato.  And  this  is  a  specimen  of  our  best 
authorities. 

Here  is  Plutarch's  version  of  the  table  story  : 
'  One  day  Socrates  returning  from  the  palaestra 
took  Euthydemus  with  him  [to  dinner].  Xan 
thippe  rushed  at  him  in  a  towering  passion,  broke 
out  into  abuse  and  finally  upset  the  table.  Euthy 
demus  arose,  and  feeling  much  aggrieved  was  going 
away.  Tut !  tut !  said  Socrates,  why  at  your  house 
a  hen  flew  in  and  did  the  very  same  thing  and  I 
was  not  provoked !'  This  illustrates  the  way  in 
which  the  philosophic  gossips  of  antiquity  allowed 
themselves  to  modify  traditions  in  order  to  suit 
their  momentary  ends.  In  this  version  by  Plu 
tarch,  instead  of  Alcibiades  we  have  Euthydemus, 
and  the  dramatic  features  are  entirely  effaced ;  but 
that  matters  little  to  the  narrator  so  long  as  the 
moral  is  preserved.  The  substantial  truth  is  there. 
Who  cares  about  the  circumstantial  falsehood? 
And  so  in  another  place  another  philosopher  is 
brought  in,  and  another  table  upset,  in  order  to 
show  how  placidly  such  domestic  troubles  are  to  be 
received.  Pittacus  is  the  hero  this  time,  and  the 
wife  of  Pittacus  the  heroine;  only  the  remark  of 
Pittacus  is  more  dignified,  as  befits  his  rank  :  '  Each 
of  us  has  his  evil :  happy  the  man  who  has  mine.' 
From  another  source  it  appears  that  Pittacus,  like 
Socrates,  had  a  wife  who  henpecked  him  furiously ; 
and  in  connection  with  our  theory  in  regard  to 
Xanthippe,  it  is  deserving  of  note  that  her  more 


234  XANTHIPPE   AND   SOCRATES. 

aristocratic  origin  is  stated  as  the  cause.  We  leave 
to  others  the  rapid  induction  that,  in  antiquity, 
wives  of  gentle  birth  played  the  shrew  when  mar 
ried  to  men  of  humbler  extraction,  and  used  to 
upset  tables  when  their  husbands  invited  friends  to 
dinner ;  but  certainly  the  story  seems  to  be  a  stock 
one,  and  we  incline  to  think  that  the  names  of  So 
crates  and  Xanthippe  have  been  written  in  to  fill  up 
the  parts.  Among  the  recent  curious  applications 
of  the  photographic  art  is  that  of  representing  two 
celebrities  in  grotesque  and  unlikely  combinations. 
The  bodies  are  taken  from  hired  posture-makers, 
the  heads  put  in  from  other  photographs.  In  such 
anecdotes  as  these  this  modern  rascality  is  antici 
pated. 

As  this  group  of  stories  may  be  called  the  table 
stories,  so  the  next  may  be  entitled  the  cloak  stories. 
The  himation,  the  upper  garment,  or,  as  it  is  com 
monly  translated,  the  cloak,  of  the  Greeks,  was  an 
epicene  article  of  attire,  being  in  fact  a  large  blanket- 
shawl  ;  and  hence  by  way  of  joke  it  was  often  said 
that  such  and  such  a  couple  were  too  poor  or  too 
stingy  to  have  more  than  one  himation  between 
them.  Who  first  started  the  notable  jest  it  is  im 
possible  at  this  distance  of  time  to  discover,  just  as 
it  is  impossible  to  tell  whose  refined  wit  originated 
the  conception  of  the  man  who  lies  abed  while  his 
solitary  shirt  is  in  the  wash.  Among  the  figures 
made  to  fit  this  story  are  Phocion  and  his  wife. 
Phocion  was  famous  for  his  virtue  and  his  poverty, 
and  of  course  the  anecdote-pilferers  of  antiquity 
cast  lots  upon  his  raiment.  y£lian,  a  wretched  and 
untrustworthy  scribbler,  devotes  a  chapter  of  his 


XANTHIPPE   AND   SOCRATES.  235 

'  Varia  Historia '  to  the  commemoration  of  this  com 
munity  of  goods  between  Phocion  and  his  wife,  and 
waxes  eloquent  on  the  subject  somewhat  after  the 
following  strain  :  '  Was  it  not,  quoth  he,  great  sober- 
mindedness  in  Phocion's  wife  to  wear  Phocion's 
cloak  ?  She  did  not  want  a  corn-colored  silk,  she 
did  not  want  a  Lyons  brocade,  she-  did  not  want  a 
Garibaldi  jacket,  she  did  not  want  a  circular  cape, 
she  did  not  want  a  net  for  her  hair,  she  did  not 
want  a  chignon  for  her  head,  she  did  not  want 
this  and  she  did  not  want  that,  but  she  wore  her 
sober-mindedness  next  to  her  skin  and  over  that  she 
put  on  just  what  she  had.'  In  glaring  contrast  to 
this  model  of  female  sober-mindedness  is  lugged 
forth  Xanthippe  the  wife  of  Socrates,  who  would 
not  put  on  her  husband's  cloak  and  go  to  the  show 
in  that  rig,  and  so  brought  on  herself  the  famous 
rebuke,  '  Aha !'  said  Socrates,  '  so  you  are  going 
out  not  to  see  but  to  be  seen.'  This  pat  antithesis, 
which  we  have  no  doubt  was  invented  by  Cain  or 
Lamech  or  whoever  first  had  a  dressed  wife,  is 
dished  up  to  us  again  by  the  aforementioned  Jo 
hannes  .  Stobaeus  in  a  slightly  different  platter. 
Here  Xanthippe  is  represented  as  going  out  in  full 
dress,  and  nothing  is  said  of  her  refusal  to  wear 
Socrates'  cloak,  which  indeed  would  not  have 
constituted  a  very  sumptuous  outfit.  True,  we  read 
that  on  one  occasion  the  unwashen  philosopher 
bathed  himself  and  put  on  pumps  to  go  to  a  grand 
dinner,  but  his  ordinary  attire  was  so  shabby  that 
his  crack-brained  friend  Apollodorus  sent  him  a 
handsome  himation  to  die  in  ;  and  if  Xanthippe 
wanted  to  go  out  in  holiday  dress,  she  would  have 


236  XANTHIPPE   AND  SOCRATES. 

done  better  to  borrow  a  wrapper  from  some  neighbor 
rather  than  from  her  husband.  This  story  of  the 
vicarious  himation  was  still  further  bolstered  up  by 
another  tale  that  Xanthippe  assaulted  Socrates  in 
the  market-place  and  stripped  off  his  cloak,  which 
violent  proceeding  was  of  course  attributed  to  her 
rage  at  being  baulked  in  her  gadabout  propensities, 
in  consequence  of  Socrates'  appropriation  of  the 
sole  himation  of  their  house  and  home.  But  the 
final  touch  is  given  by  Marcus  Aurelius,  who  in  one 
of  his  dolorous  preachments  exhorts  himself  to  re 
member  how  Socrates  behaved  on  one  occasion, 
when  Xanthippe  having  sallied  forth  with  his  hima 
tion,  the  philosopher  donned  a  sheepskin  coverlet, 
and  what  he  said  to  his  friends  when  they  retreated 
in  confusion  at  the,  sight  of  him  arrayed  in  such  tog 
gery.  We  wish  that  Marcus  had  had  the  goodness 
to  tell  us,  who  do  not  know,  instead  of  the  super- 
fluousness  of  reminding  his  tiresome  self,  who  did 
know ;  and  he  would  fain  have  done  so,  as  these 
self-communings  were  intended  for  the  public  eye, 
but  probably  his  Xanthippe,  Faustina,  did  not  give 
him  time  to  finish  the  memorandum,  and  we  must 
content  ourselves  with  remarking  that,  if  there  is 
any  truth  in  the  anecdote,  the  stupefaction  of  the 
philosopher's  friends  shows  that  this  was  no  ordi 
nary  transaction. 

The  same  idle  spirit  of  invention  that  divided 
Socrates'  cloak  multiplied  his  wives ;  and  ac 
cording  to  a  favorite  tradition,  which  we  find 
repeated  over  and  over  again  in  the  gravest  authors, 
Socrates  was  twice  married.  The  name  of  his 
imaginary  wife  was  Myrto,  a  granddaughter  of 


XANTHIPPE   AND   SOCRATES.  237 

Aristides,  and  the  match  was  made  in  view  of  the 
eternal  fitness  of  things.  What  better  wife  for  the 
poor  and  virtuous  philosopher  than  the  descendant 
of  the  poor  and  virtuous  nobleman  ?  According  to 
some,  this  Myrto  was  the  predecessor  of  Xanthippe, 
but  the  majority  heightened  the  fun  by  sealing 
another  wife  to  Socrates,  after  he  had  married  Xan 
thippe,  and  by  representing  the  two  women  as 
engaged  in  an  internecine  feud  for  the  possession  of 
the  ugliest  man  in  Athens.  The  fable  of  the  two 
simultaneous  wives  runs  counter  to  the  character  of 
Socrates  as  well  as  to  the  laws  of  Athens,  and  is 
discredited  by  the  silence  of  the  serious  friends  and 
the  comic  enemies  of  Socrates.  It  was  sufficiently 
refuted  in  antiquity,  but  refuted  only  to  be  revived 
again.1  But  it  was  not  necessary  to  invent  a  rival 
wife  in  order  to  account  for  the  shrewishness  of 
Xanthippe's  temper  on  the  ground  of  jealousy. 
There  was  enough  in  the  relations  of  Socrates  to 
other  persons  to  wound  the  feelings  of  a  wife.  In 
their  estimate  of  the  life  of  the  sexes  in  antiquity, 
modern  scholars  have  too  generally  been  contented 
to  accept  the  creed  of  the  antique  husband,  and 
to  take  for  granted  the  unquestioning  adherence  of 
the  wife  to  such  brutal  confessions  of  faith  as -we 
find  in  the  notorious  speech  against  Neaera :  '  We 
have  mistresses  (hetaerae)  for  the  sake  of  pleasure, 
concubines  for  the  daily  attendance  on  our  persons, 

1  The  ghost  of  Myrto  effectively  laid,  one  should  have 
thought,  by  Luzac  in  1809,  has  been  raised  again  by  Burmann, 
Der  legitime  Concubinat  der  Athener  und  die  vermeintliche 
Bigamie  des  Sokrates  (Jahrbucher  f.  klass.  Philol.,  Supplement- 
bd.  ix.  1878,  p.  569  foil.).— B.  L.  G. 


238  XANTHIPPE   AND   SOCRATES. 

wives  for  the  sake  of  legitimate  children,  and  of 
having  faithful  guardians  of  our  households.' 
Such  was  substantially  the  view  of  Socrates  himself 
as  announced  to  his  son  Lamprocles.  '  Streets  and 
houses  are  full  of  filles  de  joie.  The  wife  is  made  a 
wife  in  order  to  be  made  a  mother.'  So  on  another 
occasion  Socrates  defends  himself  for  his  endurance 
of  Xanthippe  by  comparing  her  with  geese.  Geese 
hiss,  but  they  lay  eggs  :  Xanthippe  scolds,  but  she 
bears  children.  But  we  doubt,  and  think  we  have 
good  reason  to  doubt,  whether  the  life  of  the  mar 
ried  woman  was  depressed  to  the  dead  level  of  this 
degrading  doctrine.  Much,  very  much,  that  is 
regarded  as  characteristic  of  the  position  of  woman 
of  antiquity,  is  characteristic  only  of  the  peculiar 
views  of  this  poet  or  that  philosopher.  Comedy  in 
all  its  forms  was  composed  for  men,  and  so  the 
testimony  of  the  comic  poets  must  be  almost  wholly 
excluded.  What  views  of  the  life  of  woman  in  this 
our  day  would  posterity  take  if  that  life  were  to  be 
seen  only  through  the  tobacco-smoke  and  alco 
holic  fumes  of  the  club-room  ?  What  would  become 
of  our  elevation,  our  purity,  our  thorough  appre 
ciation  of  the  capacities  and  excellences  of  the 
female  character,  on  all  which  this  age  of  progress 
prides  itself?  Gross  as  was  male  antiquity,  modern 
men  are  hardly  behindhand  in  this  respect,  when 
woman's  influence  is  even  temporarily  withdrawn. 
For  a  genuine  appreciation  of  that  which  underlay 
the  family  life  of  Greece,  as  it  must  underlie  any 
stable  form  of  family  life,  we  must  betake  ourselves 
to  the  domain  of  serious  Greek  poetry,  in  which 
there  are  images  of  Greek  women  pure,  noble  and 


XANTHIPPE   AND   SOCRATES.  239 

loving.  We  must  penetrate  the  recesses  of  sacred 
Greek  literature  to  divine  the  subtle  perfume  of 
their  domestic  altars. 

Men  may  construe  God's  ordinance  as  they 
please  ;  they  may  take  the  sensual  view  of  marriage, 
unfortunately  too  common  in  modern  times ;  they 
may  take  the  political  view  which  was  current  in 
antiquity,  and  regard  wedlock  as  a  loveless  bond 
contracted  for  the  purpose  of  adding  items  to  the 
census.  But  such  is  God's  blessing  on  what  He 
himself  has  ordained,  that  the  necessary  community 
of  life  leads,  as  it  has  led  throughout  all  time,  in  the 
vast  majority  of  cases,  to  earnest  and  ardent  affection. 

Consuetude  concinnat  amorem. 

On  general  principles,  then,  we  do  not  doubt 
that  Xanthippe  loved  Socrates,  and  that  she  was 
deeply  wounded  by  his  neglect.  Even  if  guilty  of 
no  actual  infidelity,  he  used  to  keep  very  suspicious 
company,  and  Theodote  was  scarcely  the  only  lady 
of  high-priced  complaisance  that  he  visited.  But  it 
was  not  from  her  own  sex  that  Xanthippe  had  to 
fear  the  most  serious  rivalry.  For  Socrates,  as  for 
a  large  proportion  of  his  countrymen,  all  that  we 
call  '  romance '  in  love  found  its  expression  in 
admiration  of  the  beautiful  youth  rather  than  of  the 
beautiful  maiden ;  and  while  we  give  full  credence 
to  all  that  has  been  said  in  championship  of  his 
purity,  we  must  not  overlook  the  fact  that  a  certain 
degree  of  scandal  attached  itself  to  some  of  his  per 
sonal  relations.  It  was  but  natural  then  that  the 
fierce  jealousy  of  Xanthippe's  ardent  nature  should 
have  been  directed  against  Alcibiades  rather  than 


240  XANTHIPPE   AND   SOCRATES. 

against  a  Myrto  or  a  Theodote ;  and  we  are  not  sur 
prised  at  reading  in  more  than  one  author  that  when 
Alcibiades  sent  to  Socrates  a  cake  (as  one  should 
say  a  box  of  bonbons],  Xanthippe  with  true  womanly 
indignation  trod  under  feet  this  token  of  affection — 
whereupon  Socrates,  '  Well ',  quoth  he,  '  you  won't 
have  any  neither ' — a  style  of  wit  not  at  all  above 
the  capacity  of  a  modern  nursery-maid,  and,  like  so 
many  mots  of  antiquity,  utterly  unworthy  of  record. 
Not  inconsistent  with  this  outburst  of  jealousy  is 
the  story  that  on  one  occasion  Alcibiades  sent  Soc 
rates  magnificent  presents,  the  acceptance  of  which 
was  urged  by  Xanthippe  and  declined  by  Socrates  ; 
but  as  Alcibiades  was  ostentatious  in  his  offer,  there 
may  have  been  as  much  spite  in  her  conduct  then 
as  before.  And  moreover  the  same  story,  mutatis 
mutandis,  is  told  of  everybody. 

But  this  whole  question  of  jealousy  leads  us  to  a 
graver  and  deeper  consideration  of  the  want  of  inner 
harmony  between  the  husband  and  the  wife.  We 
waive  the  difference  of  age ;  it  was  a  difference  of 
which  the  Greeks  thought  favorably.  We  waive 
the  difference  of  birth,  which  may  be  a  mere  fancy. 
We  waive  the  oddities  and  eccentricities  of  Socrates, 
his  poverty,  his  laziness,  his  neglect.  All  these  do 
not  render  impossible  a  comfortable  conjugal  co 
operation.  But  it  is  evident  that  Socrates  and  Xan 
thippe  were  not  what  is  called  a  happy  couple  ;  and 
we  think  that  the  cause  is  to  be  sought  in  the  fact 
that  their  natural  tempers  were  so  much  alike.  It 
was  not  without  a  certain  insight  into  character 
that  Cato  the  Elder  called  Socrates  a  violent  man 
and  a  revolutionist;  and  a  remarkable  witness, 


XANTHIPPE   AND   SOCRATES.  24! 

Aristoxenus,  says  that  his  sensuality  was  vehement, 
that  he  was  ill-bred,  ignorant,  unpolished,  easily 
provoked,  naturally  rough-tempered,  and  whenever 
fired  by  passion,  guilty  of  every  impropriety.1  In 
this  portrait  we  should  hardly  recognize  the  secular 
saint  of  Plato  and  Xenophon,  but  if  we  take  it  as  a 
representation  of  his  natural  disposition,  we  can 
find  every  lineament  of  it  in  his  face  and  not  a  few 
traces  of  it  in  his  conduct.  It  is  not  likely  that 
Xanthippe  always  found  her  husband  as  cool  as  he 
was  after  his  memorable  shower-bath,  and  when  the 
moral  restraint  of  company  was  removed  there  may 
have  been  some  very  unphilosophical  scenes.  Fa 
mous  is  the  story,  to  which  we  have  already 
adverted,  that  when  Xanthippe  tore  off  his  cloak  in 
the  market-place,  his  friends  advised  him  to  admin 
ister  manual  correction.  His  reply  was  character 
istic  :  '  Yes ',  said  he,  '  so  that  the  bystanders  may 
cry,  while  we  are  at  fisticuffs,  Well  done !  Socrates. 
Well  done !  Xanthippe/  (Go  it,  Socrates !  Go  it, 
Xanthippe  !)  In  this  answer  there  is  shown  an  evi 
dent  repugnance  to  washing  foul  linen  in  public ; 
but  whether  he  would  not  have  done  it  at  home  is 
another  question.  But  we  have  no  quarrel  with  the 
traditional  representation  of  Socrates,  and  we  are 
perfectly  willing  to  believe  the  wonderful  stories 

1  Remembering  that  my  late  colleague,  Professor  C.  D. 
Morris,  whose  English  conservatism  I  shocked  very  often,  was 
especially  shocked  by  a  popular  lecture  in  which  I  presented 
a  similar  sketch  of  the  great  saint  of  heathendom  from 
the  point  of  view  of  the  Athenian  Philistine,  I  am  moved  to 
add  here  that  Zeller's  vindication  of  Socrates  against  Aristo 
xenus  and  all  such  carpers  seems  to  be  complete.  See  his 
Philosophic  der  Griechen,  ii.4  i  (1888),  p.  65.— B.  L.  G. 


242  XANTHIPPE   AND   SOCRATES. 

that  are  told  of  his  patient  endurance  of  the  per 
sonal  violence  that  he  brought  upon  himself  by  his 
rude  and  searching  style  of  debate.     The  passionate 
nature,  which  was  unfettered  in  the  case  of  Xan 
thippe,  was  kept  down  in  Socrates  by  a  rigid  self- 
control  ;  but  the  self-control  of  an  ardent  disposition 
almost  always  degenerates  into  hardness,  and  Xan 
thippe's   unruly  member  can   hardly  have  been  a 
severer    scourge   than   the  bridled  tongue  of  Soc 
rates.     Xanthippe's  tongue  may  be  compared  with 
the  motherly  slipper  which  the  Greek  matron  used 
in  the  same  way  as  her  modern  sister.     Its  blows 
were  rapid,  nervous,  rubefacient,  but  not  really  dan 
gerous.     The  cuts  which  Socrates  gave  often  went 
to  the  bone.     Repression  is  not  amiable  of  itself; 
and  the  virtue  of  Socrates  was  not  the  result  of  the 
transforming    process   of  a  Christian    faith  which 
works  by  love  and  turns  human  passion  into  its 
proper  channel — does  not  try  to  dam  it  up,  does  not 
try  to  drain  it  dry.     Now  this  constant  self-control, 
which  must  have  been  more  or  less  evident  as  it 
was  more  or  less  conscious,  must  have  chafed  Xan 
thippe  even    worse   than   an   occasional   outbreak. 
There  is  nothing  more  irritating  to  a  violent  temper 
than  coolness  in  an  antagonist,  and  especially  cool 
ness  in  one  who  ought  to  be  angry ;  just  as  we  feel 
a  peculiar  provocation  at  dexterity  and  grace  in  an 
otherwise  awkward  person.    If  Socrates  had  thrown 
the  basin  at  Xanthippe's  head  when  she  scolded  him 
so  furiously,  he  would  have  escaped  his  drenching, 
and  we  should  not  have  been  entertained  with  his 
famous  remark  about  thunder  followed  by  rain.    The 
self-restraint  for  which  Socrates  was  so  distinguished, 


XANTHIPPE   AND   SOCRATES.  243 

and  which  was  to  the  Greek  what  humility  is  to  the 
Christian,  the  essence  of  virtue,  was  to  be  attained  on 
Socratic  principles  by  an  intellectual  process,  and  his 
own  life  was  an  exemplification  of  his  doctrine  that 
'  virtue  is  knowledge  '.  It  was  perhaps  as  fair  fruit 
as  such  principles  could  produce,  but  as  compared 
with  the  fruit  of  the  Spirit,  it  is  utterly  insipid.  '  The 
fruit  of  the  Spirit  is  love ',  and  from  that,  as  from  a 
sweet  fountain,  flow  'joy,  peace,  long-suffering,  gen 
tleness,  goodness  (kindness),  faith,  meekness,  tem 
perance  (self-control).'  The  heathen  philosopher 
reverses  the  order  of  nature,  which  is  the  order  of 
God,  and  there  is  little  trace  of  love.  Compare,  if 
you  have  the  courage  to  undergo  the  tedium  of  the 
contrast,  the  glowing  eulogy  of  the  Christian  agape 
in  St.  Paul  with  the  Socratic  views  of  love  and 
friendship  as  they  are  faithfully  presented  in  that 
weary,  weary  second  book  of  the  Memorabilia,  and 
you  will  say  with  Kochly  that  even  regarding  the 
inspired  writings  as  human  compositions,  those 
eight  short  verses  are  worth  a  thousand  times  as 
much  as  all  these  tedious  and  tasteless,  shallow  and 
frigid  ratiocinations,  in  which  '  the  offices  of  love 
are  weighed  in  the  gold-balance  of  utility ',  and  in 
which  friends  and  brothers  are  compared  by  Soc 
rates  with  horses  and  dogs,  just  as  he  had  else 
where  compared  his  wife  with  geese. 

That  his  views  on  all  this  class  of  subjects  were 
revolting  to  the  correct  instinct  of  the  Athenians,  is 
evident  from  the  elaborate  defence  into  which  his 
apologist  Xenophon  enters  against  the  common 
opinion  that  Socrates  taught  his  pupils,  in  the  pur 
suit  of  the  '  knowledge  that  puffeth  up ',  to  heap 


244  XANTHIPPE   AND  SOCRATES. 

contumely  on  their  parents  ;  and  of  all  the  scenes  in 
the  '  Clouds ',  the  deepest  and  most  abiding  impres 
sion  seems  to  have  been  made  by  the  closing  act  in 
which  the  enlightened  disciple  of  Socrates  beats  his 
father  and  proves  to  the  old  man  by  highly  Socratic 
arguments  that  he  is  perfectly  right  so  to  do. 
Strepsiades,  the  father,  beat  his  son,  when  that  son 
was  a  boy,  with  a  view  to  his  betterment.  Pheidip- 
pides,  the  son,  only  returned  the  compliment  with 
the  same  due  regard  to  the  moral  improvement  of 
his  father.  There  was  good  will  in  the  one  case  as 
in  the  other.  Pheidippides  was  a  child  when  his 
father  beat  him.  Strepsiades  was  a  child  when  his 
son  beat  him  (for  are  not '  old  men  twice  children '  ?). 
Then  the  legislation  was  partial,  for  it  was  the 
fathers,  and  not  the  sons,  that  made  the  law  against 
father-whipping;  and  the  basis  of  the  new  law 
ought  to  be  '  universal  amnesty  and  impartial  flagel 
lation  '.  And  finally,  with  a  genuine  Socratic  stroke, 
the  learned  flogger  defends  his  position  by  the 
analogy  of  cocks,  which  punish  their  paternal 
chanticleers  without  any  regard  to  the  claims  of 
blood.  Is  this  indeed  a  baseless  caricature,  or  is  it 
not  rather  a  legitimate  consequence  of  the  doctrine 
which  resolves  morality  into  intellectuality  ? 

From  the  preceding  exhibit  it  is  tolerably  evident, 
we  think,  that  Socrates  could  not  have  been  what 
we  should  call  in  modern  times  a  loving  husband. 
Indeed,  much  love  could  not  be  expected  from  the 
connection,  if  he  really  formed  it  for  the  purpose 
alleged  in  the  Symposium  of  Xenophon.  In  this 
dialogue,  Socrates  is  represented  as  maintaining 
that  woman's  nature  is  not  inferior  in  quality  to 


XANTHIPPE   AND   SOCRATES.  245 

man's,  but  lacks  only  judgment  and  strength ;  and 
hence  every  married  man  is  to  train  his  wife  in 
whatsoever  he  may  want  her  to  know.  Here  An- 
tisthenes  puts  in  a  home-thrust :  Why  do  you  not 
train  Xanthippe,  the  most  shrewish  woman  in  the 
world — nay,  in  Antisthenes'  humble  opinion,  the 
most  shrewish  of  all  women  that  have  ever  been  or 
ever  will  be  ?  Socrates  replies  that  he  married  her 
as  those  who  wish  to  become  horsemen  choose  not 
gentle  but  mettlesome  horses,  thinking  that  if  they 
can  manage  them  they  can  manage  all.  And  so  he 
thought  that  if  he  could  endure  her,  he  could  easily 
get  on  with  anybody.  It  will  be  observed  that  this 
is  no  reply  to  the  question  of  Antisthenes,  unless 
we  are  to  suppose  that  Socrates  preferred  training 
himself  to  training  his  wife,  and  so  accounted  for 
the  conjugal  supremacy  of  the  *  dun  mare  ',  if  we 
may  so  translate  Xanthippe's  name.  But  what  is 
here  evidently  meant  as  an  evasive  jest  is  gravely 
inserted  as  an  historical  fact  in  the  biography  of 
Socrates  by  Diogenes  of  Laerte  ;  and  this  supposed 
conduct  of  Socrates  was  imitated  by  a  Christian 
lady,  '  who  desired  St.  Athanasius  to  procure  for 
her  out  of  the  -widows  fed  from  the  ecclesiastical 
corban  an  old  woman,  morose,  peevish  and  impa 
tient,  that  she  might  by  the  society  of  so  ungentle  a 
person  have  often  occasion  to  exercise  her  patience, 
her  forgiveness  and  charity.'  Modern  husbands 
often  allege  in  jest  a  thousand  absurd  reasons  for 
their  choice  of  a  helpmeet,  and  no  one  is  ridiculous 
enough  to  believe  them  ;  but  let  an  ancient  husband 
assert  in  fun  that  he  selected  his  wife  as  a  moral 
dynamometer,  or  as  we  should  say,  as  a  '  means  of 


246  XANTHIPPE   AND   SOCRATES. 

grace  ',  and  straightway  the  declaration  is  recorded, 
commented  on  and  haply  followed.  To  cite  but 
one  objection :  Is  it  at  all  likely,  in  view  of  the 
secluded  life  of  the  Athenian  maidens  of  the  period, 
that  Xanthippe  should  have  acquired  before  her 
marriage  a  reputation  like  that  of  Kate  the  Curst  of 
Shakespearian  memory? 

Xanthippe's  worst  fault  was  her  scolding  pro 
pensity,  and  this  it  would  be  futile  to  deny.  But 
her  high  temper  found  its  vent  chiefly  in  words, 
and  we  discredit  the  stories  about  the  table-turning 
and  the  cloak-pulling.  She  was  a  good  mother,  and 
Lamprocles,  her  eldest,  can  bring  nothing  against 
her  in  the  way  of  deeds.  His  father,  as  reported  by 
Xenophon,  expostulates  with  the  lad  about  his  un- 
filial  bearing,  and  gives  him  a  long  and  dismal  cate 
chetical  lecture  about  the  obligations  of  children  to 
parents.  Lamprocles  grants  that  she  had  been  a 
good  mother  to  him,  that  she  did  not  kick  him,  that 
she  did  not  bite  him ;  but  to  him  her  tongue  was 
worse  than  her  teeth,  her  bark  than  her  bite.  '  Any 
where,  anywhere  out  of  the  world',  rather  than 
endure  that  tongue-lashing,  thinks  Lamprocles ; 
and  at  the1  end,  instead  of  yielding  gracefully  to  his 
father's  advice,  he  preserves  a  moody  silence.  A 
passage  of  Seneca  mentions  among  the  troubles  of 
Socrates  his  children — liberos  indociles  et  matri 
quam  patri  similiores ;  but  to  our  mind  Lamprocles 
does  not  seem  so  very  much  to  blame,  and  at  all 
events  it  is  hard  measure  to  judge  poor  little  So- 
phroniscus  and  Menexenus  by  Lamprocles'  fit  of 
the  sulks. 

The  passionate  temper  of  Xanthippe  was  as  vehe- 


XANTHIPPE   AND   SOCRATES.  247 

ment  in  grief  as  in  anger,  and  when  the  time  of  her 
husband's  execution  came,  all  the  floodgates  of 
emotion  were  opened.  Plato  observes  a  singular 
reticence  with  regard  to  Xanthippe,  and  it  is  curious 
to  note  that  when  forced  to  speak  of  her,  he  speaks 
as  cautiously  as  if  she  were  an  avalanche  that  an 
imprudent  cry  might  bring  about  his  head — 

Und  willst  Du  die  schlafende  Lowin  nicht  wecken, 
So  wandle  still  durch  die  Strasse  der  Schrecken. 

Phaedo,  in  the  dialogue  that  bears  his  name,  says 
that  when  the  friends  of  Socrates  entered  the  jail 
they  found  Xanthippe — '  for  you  know  her ' — with 
the  baby  in  her  arms  and  sitting  by  her  husband. 
There  is  a  world  of  meaning  in  that  little  paren 
thesis — '  for  you  know  her ' — as  it  reads  in  the 
Greek.  'As  you  know  her,  it  is  needless  for  me  to 
say  more ;  if  you  did  not  know  her,  it  would  be 
useless  for  me  to  attempt  a  description.'  When 
she  commenced  the  usual  feminine  lamentations, 
'Ah,  Socrates  !  this  is  the  last  time  that  your  friends 
will  speak  to  you  and  you  to  them,'  her  husband, 
wishing  to  put  an  end  to  the  painful  scene,  cast  a 
glance  at  Crito,  and  said — What  did  he  say? 
Positively  as  if  to  keep  up  the  mystery,  the  manu 
scripts  vary  in  two  of  the  four  important  words  he 
said.  The  tense  and  the  pronoun  make  the  subtle 
difference  between  harshness  and  gentleness,  which 
in  English  would  be  expressed  by  the  tone  of  the 
voice.  Was  it,  '  Crito,  let  my  wife  be  taken  home,' 
or  was  it, '  Crito,  home  with  this  woman  '  ?  So  poor 
Xanthippe  went  home  under  a  guard  of  Crito's  ser 
vants,  crying  aloud  and  beating  her  breast  as  she 
went.  In  after  years,  if  she  appears  at  all,  she 


248  XANTHIPPE   AND   SOCRATES. 

appears  only  as  a  witness  of  her  husband's  serenity 
of  countenance  and  temper  during  the  political 
troubles  of  Athens ;  and  no  doubt  she  discovered 
other  virtues  innumerable  in  her  good  old  man, 
after  he  had  passed  away.  Implacable  posterity 
has  found  none  in  her,  and  tradition  keeps  her  ever 
fretting,  ever  scolding,  upsetting  tables,  emptying 
basins,  and  gadding  about  with  her  husband's  cloak 
on  in  that  Hades  of  disreputables,  into  which  we 
have  endeavored  to  throw  a  few  gleams  of  light, 
with  a  consciousness  of  certain  and  perhaps  de 
served  failure. 


APOLLONIUS  OF  TYANA 


APOLLONIUS  OF  TYANA.1 

The  first  artistic  form  of  philosophic  composition 
in  Greek  prose  was  the  dialogue,  the  last  was  bio 
graphy  ;  and  in  both  periods,  so  entire  was  the  sub 
mission  to  the  established  norm,  that  when  Xeno- 
phon  wished  to  vindicate  the  life  of  his  master  he 
made  him  talk  ;  when  Porphyry  wished  to  advocate 
the  doctrines  of  his  teacher  he  wrote  his  life. 
Whence  the  popularity  of  this  biographical  form  in 
the  later  centuries  of  Greek  literature  ?  Here,  as 
often,  the  difficulty  of  the  answer  lies  in  its  readi 
ness,  for  every  bias  of  this  sort  may  be  explained  in 
so  many  ways,  every  movement  may  be  the  re 
sultant  of  so  many  forces,  that  the  puzzle  is  which 
explanation  to  drop,  which  force  to  exclude  from 
the  count.  The  biographical  mania  may  have  been 
imported  from  the  East ;  or  the  pressure  of  the  Em 
pire  may  have  made  the  individual  of  more  import 
ance  in  the  history  of  thought;  or  the  Gospel 
incorporated  in  the  life  of  our  Saviour  may  have 
provoked  the  antagonists  of  the  Christian  faith  to 
set  up  their  ideals  of  the  Way  and  the  Truth  in  the 

1i.  Apollonius  de  Tyane  par  Philostrate.    Avec  Introduction, 
Notes  et  Eclaircissements.     Par  A.  Chassang.     Paris  :  1862. 

2.  Apollonius   von    Tyana.       Eine  culturhistorische  Unter- 
suchung.     Von  Dr.  Eduard  Muller.     Breslau  :   1861. 

3.  Hellenismus  und  Christenthum.     Von  Dr.  H.  Kellner. 
Koln:   1866. 


252  APOLLONIUS   OF   TYANA. 

Life  of  this  or  that  hero  of  pagan  philosophy.  Any 
one  of  these  lines  of  causation  may  be  easily  de 
fended  ;  but  the  last  has  for  us  a  peculiar  interest 
and  importance,  as  we  are  righting  on  the  same 
battle-field  and  the  parties  are  to  all  intents  the 
same.  Hellenism  and  Christianity  are  grappling 
now  as  they  grappled  seventeen  centuries  ago  ;  and 
if  the  shape  of  the  weapons  has  varied  in  the  long 
struggle,  the  strategic  points  are  unchanged.  Cata 
pults  and  blunderbusses  and  needle-guns  find  the 
same  shelter,  occupy  the  same  rest,  take  the  same 
aim.  The  pagan  of  the  third  century  puts  Jesus  of 
Nazareth  and  Apollonius  of  Tyana  on  a  level ;  the 
English  free-thinker  of  the  seventeenth  argues  the 
necessity  of  accepting  or  rejecting  together  the 
miracles  and  the  divinity  of  Apollonius  and  Christ ; 
and  towards  the  close  of  the  eighteenth  a  heavy 
German  threw  his  contribution  of  mud  at  the  reli 
gion  of  Christ  in  the  form  of  a  system  of  Apollonian 
Apologetics  after  the  fashion  of  the  advocates  of 
Christianity,  wherein  he  proved  by  prophecies 
drawn  from  Homer  and  Hesiod,  Pindar  and  Plato, 
Vergil  and  Horace,  that  Apollonius  was  as  much 
the  Messiah  of  heathendom  as  Christ  was  the  Mes 
siah  of  the  Jews.  In  the  effulgence  of  this  blessed 
time,  such  pleasantry  would  appear  too  coarse  and 
crude.1  '  World-historical '  personages  are  to  be 
approached  with  due  respect ;  and  we  must  learn 
to  evolve  the  real  Apollonius  out  of  the  romance  of 

1  Nothing  could  be  too  coarse  or  crude  for  the  author  of  the 
latest  attempt  I  have  seen  to  glorify  the  Tyanite  at  the  expense 
of  the  Nazarene,  D.  M.  Tredwell,  A  Sketch  of  the  Life  of 
Apollonius  of  Tyana.  New  York  :  1886. — B.  L.  G. 


APOLLONIUS   OF    TYANA.  2$$ 

Philostratus — and  the  real  Christ  out  of  the  narra 
tive  of  the  Evangelists. 

Apollonius  of  Tyana  is  a  great  name ;  but  if  it 
had  not  been  for  Philostratus,  he  would  not  be  even 
the  puzzling  shadow  that  he  is  now.  Some  Sitz- 
fleischius  might  have  collected  the  stray  notices  of 
him  scattered  through  various  authors  of  the  first 
centuries  after  Christ ;  but  his  real  historical  im 
portance  he  owes  to  the  romancer  who  made  him 
the  hero  of  the  most  curious  literary  performance 
of  that  time.  The  aforesaid  Sitzfleischius  might 
have  told  us  that  Apollonius  of  Tyana  in  Cappa- 
docia  was  born  about  the  same  time  as  our  Saviour, 
and  departed  this  life  soon  after  the  death  of  Do- 
mitian  (96  A.  D.) ;  that  he  was  a  Pythagorean 
philosopher,  a  prophet  of  great  repute,  an  arch- 
magician.  If  Sitzfleischius  had  been  skeptical  he. 
would  have  pronounced  him  a  charlatan  ;  if  devout, 
he  would  have  looked  on  him  as  one  that  had  a 
familiar  spirit.  We  should  still  have  known  that 
Caracalla  raised  a  monument  in  his  honor,  that 
Alexander  Severus  set  up  his  image  in  the  Imperial 
chapel  by  the  side  of  Abraham,  Christ,  and  Or 
pheus,  and  that  Aurelian  made  vows  to  him  of 
temples  and  statues.  But  of  all  his  wonderful 
travels  we  should  have  known  as  little  as  Apollo 
nius  himself;  of  his  miracles  we  should  be  almost 
wholly  ignorant.  One  historian  would  have  pre 
served  one  specimen  of  his  gift  of  second-sight — 
and  this  might  have  been  cited  once  in  a  while ; 
but  blot  out  Philostratus  and  the  traditional  Apol 
lonius  is  blotted  out  with  him  ;  and  instead  of  the 
ample  canvas,  the  rich  details,  the  warm  coloring, 


254  APOLLONIUS   OF    TYANA. 

the  life-like  posturing,  we  should  have  a  bald  out 
line  with  the  sole,  paltry  recommendation  of  truth. 

It  is  to  Philostratus,  then,  that  Apollonius  owes 
his  reputation ;  his  other  biographers  seem  to  have 
fallen  into  speedy  oblivion,  and  their  names  are  pre 
served  to  us  chiefly  by  their  successful  rival.  It 
was  Philostratus  that  kept  the  ideal  Apollonius 
before  the  minds  of  men ;  so  that  everybody  had 
heard  and  read  of  this  wonderful  sage,  his  pure  life, 
his  imposing  presence,  his  miraculous  deeds,  his 
strange  power  of  clairvoyance.  So  decidedly  is 
Apollonius,  as  we  have  him,  the  creation  of  Philo 
stratus,  that  here  and  there  a  scholar  has  been 
found  to  deny  his  historical  existence ;  and  although 
such  a  view  is  untenable,  still  we  might  for  the 
special  purpose  of  this  essay  abstract  altogether 
from  the  moot  point  as  briefly  presented  by  Gibbon, 
'  whether  Apollonius  was  a  sage,  an  impostor,  or  a 
fanatic  '.  In  the  Apollonius  of  Philostratus  we  have 
the  best  that  the  Hellenism  of  the  Christian  centu 
ries  could  do,  in  the  way  of  an  incarnation  of  divine 
wisdom  and  goodness.  As  an  idealized  man,  he 
serves  to  show  the  conscious  craving  of  that  time ; 
as  a  mere  exemplar,  his  impotence  shows  that  the 
great  want  was  a  Saviour,  not  a  pattern.  It  is  from 
this  point  of  view  that  we  design  to  treat  especially 
of  the  work  of  Philostratus,  not  excluding  such 
glimpses  of  the  historical  Apollonius  as  we  catch 
from  time  to  time  through  the  bad  rhetoric  and 
absurd  extravagailcies  of  the  philosophic  Romancer- 
in-Ordinary  to  Her  Majesty  Julia  Domna. 

Julia  Domna,  the  Syrian  wife  that  Septimius 
Severus  wedded  because  the  stars  had  promised  her 


APOLLONIUS   OF   TYANA.  2$$ 

a  royal  husband,  never  forgot  that  she  owed  her 
crown  to  her  horoscope,  and  never  lost  her  passion 
for  the  mysteries  of  divination  and  astrology.  Like 
Catharine  the  Second  of  Russia,  she  united  a  fierce 
sensuality  with  a  powerful  intellect;  and  as  Catha 
rine  gave  her  days  to  etymology,  Julia  gave  her 
nights  to  philosophy.  Like  Catharine  she  sur 
rounded  herself  with  rhetoricians  and  philoso 
phers  ;  and  one  of  these  literary  courtiers  she  com 
missioned  to  write  the  life  of  Apollonius  of  Tyana. 
This  courtier,  Philostratus,  began  the  work  at  the 
instance  of  the  Empress,  but  she  died  before  he  had 
finished  it,  and  so  he  continued  it  on  his  own 
account.  Philostratus  was  a  sophist,  a  professed 
rhetorician  ;  not  a  sophist  after  the  order  of  those 
great  innovators  whom  Grote  has  so  brilliantly 
vindicated,  but  one  of  the  later  school.  Those 
earlier  sophists  may  have  been  narrow  men,  but 
through  that  channel  came  in  moral  science  and 
dialectic  method.  In  these  shallow  vessels  the 
thought  of  centuries  evaporated.  The  older  sophists 
were  rhetoricians,  but  men  for  all  that ;  while  these 
sophists  of  the  later  Hellenistic  period  were  rhetor 
icians  and  nothing  more;  and  judging  Philostratus 
by  his  age,  by  his  fellow-professors,  by  his  other 
works,  we  may  safely  say  that  he  undertook  the 
task,  not  so  much  to  do  justice  to  his  subject,  as  to 
give  full  play  to  his  versatile  fancy.  He  was  to  be 
to  Apollonius  what  Plato  was  to  Socrates ;  if  not 
his  creator,  his  transfiguring  genius.  His  powers 
were  not  to  be  hedged  in  by  a  prim  array  of  authori 
ties.  He  was  to  write  a  romance  which  should 
admit  every  species  of  prose  composition  ;  he  was 


256  APOLLONIUS   OF   TYANA. 

to  produce  a  work  which  should  fascinate  the 
reader  by  the  variety  of  its  contents  and  the  liveli 
ness  of  its  style ;  at  once  a  biography  and  a  volume 
of  travels  ;  a  fairy  tale  and  a  history ;  a  treatise  of 
zoology  and  a  manual  of  morals ;  a  picture-gallery 
of  human  characters  and  a  show-case  of  natural 
curiosities.  What  with  debates  and  orations,  curt 
letters  and  graphic  descriptions,  half-comic  scenes 
and  magic  apparitions,  the  reader  is  not  suffered  or 
at  least  not  supposed  to  grow  weary  ;  and  so  far  as 
the  object  of  the  author  was  to  make  an  interesting 
book,  his  work  is  a  success,  for  no  one  can  read 
Philostratus  and  forget  him.  But  so  far  as  he 
intended  to  set  up  in  his  imaginary  Apollonius  an 
ideal  of  Hellenic  wisdom  and  virtue,  his  failure,  as 
compared  with  Christian  standards,  is  as  ludicrous 
as  anything  can  be  that  is  so  sorrowful.  For  it  is 
sorrowful  to  see  the  futility  of  a  struggle,  no  matter 
how  feeble,  toward  light  and  life ;  and  if  we  shall 
seem  in  this  essay  to  have  overcharged  the  hu 
morous  element  in  Philostratus,  it  has  not  been 
because  we  do  not  really  appreciate  the  seriousness 
of  the  questions  which  his  book  suggests.  Of  all 
sad  writers  the  jester  Lucian  is  to  us  the  saddest, — 
sadder  even  than  the  elder  Pliny  in  his  blank  despair ; 
and  somehow  Philostratus  reminds  us  of  Lucian. 
He  is  a  Lucian  that  has  forgot  his  grammar  and 
ceased  to  grin,  and  is  trying  to  be  good.  But 
enough  of  preface.  Let  our  readers  see  for  them 
selves  what  manner  of  god-man  was  the  result  of 
that  wisdom  which  spurned  the  foolishness  of  the 
Cross ;  and  let  them  compare  for  themselves  the 
pagan's  Christ  of  fiction  with  the  Christian's  Christ 
of  the  Gospel,  who  is  the  Christ  of  history. 


APOLLONIUS    OF    TYANA. 

Apollonius  was  born  at  Tyana  in  Cappadocia, 
about  the  beginning  of  our  era.  Visions  heralded 
his  birth,  portents  accompanied  it.  Instead  of  the 
prosaic  storks  that  bring  German  babies,  a  flock  of 
swans  surrounded  his  mother ;  instead  of  a  prosaic 
parsley-bed,  the  meadow  about  a  temple  received 
the  wonderful  child.  At  the  moment  of  his  birth  a 
flash  of  lightning  came  down  from  the  sky  and  re 
turned  to  heaven  again.  Some  said  that  he  was  the 
son  of  Jove ;  but  Apollonius  himself  laid  no  claim 
to  divine  origin.  He  was  content  to  be  Apollonius, 
the  son  of  Apollonius.  When  the  lad  outgrew  his 
Cappadocian  teachers,  he  was  sent  by  his  father  to 
college  at  Tarsus  in  Cilicia,  where  he  may  possibly 
have  seen  a  Jewish  young  gentleman  of  that  city, 
Saul  by  name,  and  have  watched  with  him  the 
people  of  Tarsus  sitting  on  the  banks  of  the  cool 
Cydnus — 'like  so  many  water-fowl',  says  Apollo 
nius.  Against  this  aquatic  dissipation  Apollonius 
set  his  face  like  a  flint,  and  sternly  bade  the  men  of 
Tarsus  '  forswear  thin  potations  ',  or,  to  use  his  own 
language,  '  cease  from  getting  drunk  on  water '. 
Disgusted,  for  this  reason  and  various  others,  with 
Tarsus,  he  withdrew  to  ^Egae,  a  neighboring  town, 
and  there  gave  himself  up  to  the  study  of  the  doc 
trines  of  Pythagoras,  abstained  from  animal  food 
and  wine,  left  off  his  shoes,  wore  garments  of  linen 
only,  and  suffered  his  hair  to  grow.  His  fame 
grew  with  his  hair ;  he  came  gradually  into  notice, 
and,  like  many  American  philosophers,  began  his 
career  as  a  temperance  lecturer  with  some  applause. 
'His  style  of  speaking',  says  Philostratus,  'was 
simple  and  unaffected.  He  did  not  indulge  in 


258  APOLLONIUS    OF   TYANA. 

great,  swelling  words;  his  sentences  were  not  big 
with  poetic  expressions,  nor  stuffed  with  rakings 
and  scrapings  of  glossaries  ;  while  at  the  same  time 
he  avoided  the  extreme  of  the  Attic  purists.'  That 
is  what  Philostratus  says  ;  but  if  we  are  to  judge  by 
what  Philostratus  quotes,  the  main  characteristic  of 
the  style  of  Apollonius  is  an  affected  laconism,  in 
which  owlish  gravity  alternates  with  undignified 
spite,  vulgar  insolence  with  mock  grandeur;  and 
whenever  he  makes  a  formal  speech  and  forsakes 
his  oracular  tone,  he  is  nothing  more  nor  less  than 
our  friend  Philostratus  over  again. 

In  his  twentieth  year  Apollonius  lost  his  father, 
and  coming  soon  afterwards  into  a  considerable 
property,  he  gave  his  brother  half  of  his  own  share 
and  divided  the  rest  among  his  needy  kinsmen, 
took  a  vow  of  perpetual  chastity,  and  served  his 
period  of  silence.  Still  he  did  not  cut  himself  off 
from  all  fellowship  of  his  kind,  but  went  about 
doing  inexplicable  dumb-show  for  the  good  of  men. 
This  voluntary  poverty  and  this  self-imposed  chas 
tity  are  supposed  by  many  to  have  been  borrowed 
directly  from  the  Christian  system;  and  these  are 
two  of  the  points  in  which  Philostratus  is  thought  to 
have  had  the  model  of  our  Saviour  before  his  eyes. 
But  the  peculiarity  of  Christianity  does  not  lie  in 
its  repressive  virtues,  a  fair  assemblage  of  which 
might  easily  be  culled  from  sources  which  Christian 
influences  could  not  have  reached.  The  essence  of 
Christianity  lies  in  its  motive  power. 

After  Apollonius  had  completed  his  period  of 
silence,  Philostratus  sends  him  on  his  travels,  and 
thus  gets  an  opportunity  to  give  free  rein  to  his 


APOLLONIUS   OF    TYANA.  2$$ 

own  fancy.  For  our  part  we  have  no  inclination  to 
criticise  his  impossible  geography  and  his  fabulous 
zoology.  It  is  all  in  keeping  with  the  character 
and  scope  of  the  book.  What  if  he  makes  Apollo- 
nius  take  Nineveh  on  his  way  from  Antioch  to 
Zeugma,  as  one  should  say  New  York  on  his  way 
from  Richmond  to  Washington  ?  What  if  he  makes 
a  couple  of  rivers  exchange  courses  ?  What  if  he 
builds  up  Nineveh  and  Babylon  from  their  ruins  ? 
What  if  he  introduces  us  to  a  menagerie  of  marvel 
lous  monsters,  the  griffins  of  India,  the  original 
phcenix,  the  colossal  dragons,  thirty  cubits  long, 
with  flaming  crest,  golden  beard  and  jewelled  eyes  ? 
Every  step  of  our  path  leads  through  fairy-land, 
and  the  only  thing  that  we  cannot  forgive  in  Philo- 
stratus  is  an  occasional  attempt  to  disturb  our  peace 
of  mind  by  the  suggestion  of  critical  doubts.  Are 
we  who  swallow  the  parti-colored  lady,  black  above 
and  white  below,  to  boggle  at  the  Sciapods  that  use 
their  feet  as  umbrellas  and  their  legs  as  handles  of 
the  same  ?  Are  we  who  hold  converse  with  the 
shade  of  Achilles  to  doubt  the  existence  of  the 
martichora  ?  The  man  who  reads  Philostratus  and 
does  not  prefer  believing  in  the  martichora  is  unfit 
to  appreciate  the  book.  But  perhaps  some  of  our 
readers  have  not  heard  of  the  martichora.  Here  is 
its  faithful  portraiture  :  '  The  martichora  is  a  four- 
footed  beast,  with  the  head  of  a  man,  and  of  the  big 
ness  of  a  lion  ;  and  sports  a  tail  furnished  with 
eighteen-inch  bristles,  which  it  discharges  at  its 
pursuers.'  There  must  be  some  advantages  in 
being  a  martichora  as  well  as  in  believing  in  it. 
The  destination  of  Apollonius  in  his  first  philo- 


260  APOLLONIUS   OF   TYANA. 

sophic  journey  was  India;  for  India  was  to  the 
philosopher  of  that  day  what  Germany  is  to  the 
philosopher  of  this.  On  his  road  to  the  home  of 
the  Brahmins,  Apollonius  suddenly  disappears 
from  Antioch  to  turn  up  at  Nineveh.  At  Nineveh 
he  met  the  man  who  was  to  be  the  faithful  com 
panion  of  his  journeyings,  most  modest  of  philoso 
phers,  most  unreserved  of  admirers,  most  uncritical 
of  travellers,  Damis  by  name,  a  Ninevite  in  whom 
there  was  no  guile  and  no  sense,  as  childlike  as  any 
of  '  the  six  score  thousand  that  could  not  discern 
between  their  right  hand  and  their  left  hand '  in 
the  days  of  Jonah,  the  son  of  Amittai.  Ill-natured 
people  have  gone  so  far  as  to  deny  the  existence  of 
this  Damis ;  and  it  is  not  a  little  strange  that  we 
should  know  nothing  of  him  except  through  Philo- 
stratus,  and  that  Philostratus  should  have  known 
nothing  of  him  except  from  the  manuscript  given 
to  him  for  buck-washing  by  Julia  Domna.  But  if 
indeed  he  be  a  creation  of  the  fancy  of  Philostratus, 
he  is  a  credit  to  his  maker.  Apollonius  needed  just 
such  a  foil,  just  such  an  easy-going,  affectionate, 
timid  follower,  now  to  worship  HIM  afar  off,  now  to 
furnish  HIM  with  the  background  for  his  pretentious 
wisdom.  Damis's  book  on  Apollonius,  if  there 
ever  was  such  a  book,  bore  the  modest  title  '  Broken 
Meats,  or  Crumbs  from  the  Table  of  Apollonius ', 
and  his  whole  demeanor  was  poodleish  in  the 
extreme.  When  the  two  met  in  Nineveh,  Damis 
offered  his  services  to  Apollonius  as  a  guide  and 
interpreter  on  his  way  to  Babylon.  '  I  know  all 
the  tongues  you  have  mentioned ',  said  Apollonius, 
'  without  having  learned  any  of  them.  And  marvel 


APOLLONIUS   OF    TYANA.  26 1 

not  that  I  know  all  that  men  say,  for  I  know  also 
all  that  they  say  not.'  And  thereupon  Damis  wor 
shipped  Apollonius  as  a  god,  and  staggered  not 
through  unbelief  when  Apollonius  chose  to  employ 
an  interpreter,  as  he  did  now  and  then.  Very  soon 
an  intimate  relationship  established  itself — as  inti 
mate  as  it  could  be  between  the  stilted  idol  and 
the  flat-footed  worshipper  ;  and  sometimes  the  great 
man  would  have  his  little  joke  at  his  Sancho — some 
times  he  would  condescend  to  make  a  little  fun  for 
him. 

Scene:  Zeugma,  a  city  of  Mesopotamia.  Dra 
matis  persona :  Apollonius,  Custom-house  officer. 

C.  H.  0.  Well,  sir.  Sharp's  the  word.  What 
have  you  got  to  declare  ?  What  are  you  import 
ing? 

Apollonius.  Let  me  see.  (  Counts  on  his  fingers?) 
There's  Grace,  there's  Temperance,  there's  Faith, 
there's  Hope,  there's  Charity,  there's — 

C.  H.  O.  (Writes^  Be  quick  about  it.  Are 
those  all  your  slaves  ? 

Apollonius.  Slaves  indeed !  They  are  my  vir 
tues 

To  tell  the  truth,  Apollonius  was  not  a  shy 
person,  and  if  it  had  pleased  him  he  would  have 
made  merry  over  much  more  awful  dignitaries  than 
custom-house  officers — awful  as  they  have  been 
through  all  generations ;  and  so  we  find  him, 
further  on  in  the  narrative,  serenely  meeting  the 
stern  question  of  a  Parthian  '  man  under  authority  '. 
'  Who  are  you  ',  asked  the  Parthian,  '  that  you  are 
thus  entering  the  territory  of  the  great  king  ? ' 
'  Mine ',  replied  Apollonius, '  is  all  the  earth,  and  I 


262  APOLLONIUS   OF    TYANA. 

have  a  right  to  go  just  where  I  choose  ! '  Arrived 
in  Babylon,  Apollonius  showed  the  same  haughty 
spirit.  If  he  snubbed  the  officer  of  the  king,  he 
treated  the  king  himself  like  a  school-boy.  To  the 
magi  he  accorded  grudgingly  a  certain  degree  of 
wisdom,  and  paid  the  splendor  of  the  palace  of 
Babylon  only  the  implied  compliment  of  pretending 
not  to  notice  it.  When  invited  to  join  the  king  in 
sacrifice  he  said  :  '  Do  thou  sacrifice,  O  king,  in  thy 
way  and  let  me  sacrifice  in  mine ';  and  instead  of 
bloody  sacrifice  he  offered  up  incense,  and  instead 
of  prayer,  the  following  strange  ejaculation  :  f  Sun, 
send  me  as  far  as  seemeth  good  to  me  and  to  thee ; 
and  may  I  know  good  men ;  but  let  me  not  know 
bad  men  nor  bad  men  me.'  Cover  up  the  spiritual 
pride  of  the  first  clause  by  the  spiritual  humility  of  an 
entire  submission  to  the  divine  will,  and  there  still 
remains  the  petition  that  sunders  the  Greek,  so  con 
fident  in  his  selfish  perfection,  from  the  Friend  of 
publicans  and  sinners.  Indeed  it  is  very  evident 
that  Apollonius  went  to  Babylon  not  so  much  to 
learn  as  to  teach ;  but  the  specimens  of  his  wisdom 
which  Damis  brought  back  are  all  of  the  home 
spun  sort;  the  finer  fabrics  having  been  worn  out  in 
their  long  journey.-  Not  very  novel  is  the  wish: 
*  Grant  me,  ye  gods,  to  have  little  and  to  want 
nothing/  Not  very  profound  his  advice  to  the 
king :  '  Honor  many,  trust  few.'  However,  the 
king  was  delighted  with  his  guest,  and  is  said  to 
have  embodied  his  satisfaction  in  the  declaration 
that  Apollonius  had  relieved  him  not  only  of  all 
concern  about  his  kingdom,  but  also  of  all  con 
cern  about  death.  The  liberal  offers  which  this 


APOLLONIUS   OF   TYANA.  263 

mythical  king  made  his  mythical  visitor  were  tempt 
ing,  and  Damis,  who,  like  Sancho  Panza,  had  an 
eye  to  the  main  chance,  would  have  had  Apollo- 
nius  accept  them  ;  but  Apollonius  read  him  a  lec 
ture  on  the  evils  of  avarice,  and  the  poor  fellow 
apologized  in  great  shame  and  confusion  of  face. 
'  Never  mind  ',  said  Apollonius  with  benignity,  '  I 
did  not  mean  to  scold  you,  but  merely  to  show  you 
what  a  model  I  am.' 

The  journey  from  Babylon  to  Taxila  gives  Philo- 
stratus  a  welcome  opportunity  to  display  his  attain 
ments  in  zoology  and  mythology  and  the  fine  arts, 
and  we  are  called  on  to  trace  the  wanderings  of 
Bacchus,  to  study  the  natural  history  of  the  ele 
phant,  to  submit  to  a  discourse  on  love  of  offspring, 
and  to  yawn  over  a  lecture  on  imitation.  Certainly 
Julia  Domna  was  to  have  enough  for  her  money. 
The  only  relief  to  him  who,  like  Socrates,  prefers 
the  study  of  human  nature  to  everything  else,  is 
friend  Damis,  whose  half-vision  of  his  own  block- 
headedness  and  whole  enjoyment  of  the  good  things 
of  this  life  bring  him  nearer  to  our  hearts  than  his 
superb  teacher  ever  gets.  As  they  go  puffing  up 
the  mountain,  Damis  remarks,  after  profound  medi 
tation,  '  I  shall  go  down  on  the  other  side  no  wiser 
than  I  came  up ';  and  Apollonius  for  once  approves 
of  his  pupil's  conclusion.  When  the  shepherds 
offered  them  palm-wine,  Damis  tried  to  coax  Apol 
lonius  into  a  little  tippling,  on  the  ground  that  it 
was  not  grape-wine.  He  little  knew  his  man.  With 
more  resolution  than  most  temperance  advocates 
of  our  day  would  show,  Apollonius  brushed  away 
the  flimsy  pretext,  and  poor  Damis  began  to  fear 


264  APOLLONIUS   OF   TYANA. 

lest  he  might  be  in  honor  bound  to  follow  the 
example  of  his  chief.  But  with  more  lenity  than 
most  temperance  men  of  our  day,  Apollonius 
accords  to  Damis  and  his  other  attendants  a  gra 
cious  permission  to  drink  wine  and  to  eat  meat ;  for 
they,  poor  creatures  of  a  lower  sphere,  were  not  to 
be  bound  by  his  exalted  example.  And  so  Damis, 
being  '  one  that  was  nourished  by  his  victuals  '  and 
cheered  by  his  drink,  fell  to  with  exceeding  relish, 
thinking,  and  very  sensibly  thinking,  that  he  '  would 
get  along  better  on  his  travels  with  his  stomach 
full'.  Another  little  stroke  highly  characteristic  of 
Damis  is  his  sudden  fancy  for  buying  an  elephant- 
driver.  So  violent  was  that  fancy  that  Apollonius 
had  to  reason  the  notion  out  of  the  foolish  noddle 
of  his  humble  friend  by  a  formal  process  of  argu 
mentation,  and  we  have  our  private  misgivings  as 
to  his  real  success.  Damis  stinted,  but  the  longing 
never  left  him. 

According  to  a  law  of  the  country,  Phraotes,  king 
of  those  parts,  could  not  entertain  Apollonius  more 
than  three  days,1  but  in  that  time  they  managed  to 
become  very  much  enamored  of  one  another;  and 
in  after  years  Apollonius  took  occasion  to  annoy 
Euphrates,  the  philosopher,  by  parading  his  friend 
Phraotes,  just  as  Mrs.  Gamp  provoked  Mrs.  Prig  to 
jealousy  by  the  mention  of  Mrs.  Harris.  It  is  to  be 
supposed  that  Phraotes  returned  the  compliment. 
But,  for  our  purposes,  we  can  make  no  use  of  the 
interview  at  Taxila  between  the  philosopher  on  the 

1  Compare  the  rule  of  the  Teaching  of  the  Apostles,  which 
limits  hospitality  to  two  days  (xi.  5),  and  adds  significantly  : 
rpcis  8e  eav  fJ-eivr)  \js€vdoirpo(f)r)Tr)s  ecrriv. —  B.  L.  G. 


APOLLONIUS   OF   TYANA.  26$ 

throne  and  the  philosopher  on  the  camel.  There 
is  a  long  story  about  the  birth,  life  and  fortunes  of 
Phraotes,  a  long  screed  about  the  promotion  of  true 
visions  by  abstinence  from  wine ;  but  of  all  the 
brilliancy  which  one  would  have  expected  from  the 
attrition  of  two  such  sages,  only  a  few  sparks  seem 
to  have  struck  the  dull  optics  of  Damis.  Not  bad, 
however,  is  the  remark  of  Phraotes,  that  whereas  in 
the  time  of  Homer  the  Greeks  used  to  ask  every 
stranger  '  Are  you  a  pirate  ? '  in  the  time  of  Phraotes 
the  common  question  was  '  Are  you  a  philo 
sopher  ? '  and,  in  point  of  fact,  philosopher  and 
pirate  were  more  alike  than  might  be  supposed ; 
both  clad  in  stolen  clothes  and  both  given  to  all 
manner  of  sensual  indulgence.  Not  unworthy  of 
note  as  characteristic  of  Apollonius  is  his  decision 
of  a  case  submitted  to  his  judgment  by  Phraotes ; 
in  which  case  he  makes  good  luck  and  piety  syn 
onymous,  considers  a  man  a  sinner  because  he  had 
lost  in  a  business  transaction,  and  shows  Apollo 
nius  the  Tyanite  to  be  no  better  a  judge  than  Bil- 
dad  the  Shuhite.  When  the  parting  came,  Apol 
lonius  would  receive  nothing  from  his  generous 
host.  Even  in  reply  to  a  question  as  to  the  state  of 
his  camels,  Apollonius  was  mute.  '  Gracious  good 
ness,  my  lord  king ',  said  Damis,  '  this  man  does 
not  know  anything  about  travelling.  The  camels 
are  in  such  wretched  plight  that  we  shall  have  to 
carry  them  rather  than  they  us  ;  and  we  must  have 
others.  If  they  give  way  in  the  Indian  desert,  we 
shall  have  to  sit  down  and  frighten  off  the  buzzards 
and  the  wolves  from  them,  and  there  will  be  no 
body  to  frighten  them  off  from  us  ;  for  we  shall 


266  APOLLONIUS   OF   TYANA. 

perish  too.'     '  I  will  see  to  that/  said  the  king :  and 
so  he  sent  them  on  their  way  well  equipped. 

But  we  cannot  travel  at  so  leisurely  a  pace  with 
this  knight-errant  of  philosophy  and  his  faithful 
squire,  and  we  must  hurry  past  sea-serpents  and 
pepper-picking  monkeys  to  the  home  of  the  Brah 
mins.  As  Apollonius  and  his  attendants  were 
about  to  turn  in  at  a  village  some  furlong  or  so 
from  the  Hill  of  the  Wise  Men,  a  messenger  met 
them  and  said  to  Apollonius :  '  Let  your  compan 
ions  put  up  here,  but  do  you  come  on  just  as  you 
are  ;  for  this  is  what  They  order.'  This  mysterious 
Pythagorean  They  delighted  Apollonius,  and  he 
followed  the  messenger  gladly  up  the  hill,  which 
was  covered  with  a  cloud,  wherein  the  Brahmins 
lived  ' visible  and  invisible'.  Of  these  men  Apol 
lonius  himself  says,  in  a  speech  to  the  Egyptians, 
'  I  have  seen  the  Indian  Brahmins,  living  on  earth  and 
not  on  earth,  fortified  without  fortification,  possessing 
nothing  and  possessing  all  things.'  Now  if  this  is  the 
way  in  which  the  real  Apollonius  talked,  commend 
us  to  the  fictitious  Damis  instead.  For  if  we  may 
be  allowed  to  use  this  lingua  Apolloniana,  we  don't 
like,  though  we  do  like,  wise  unwisdom,  and  leave 
to  others,  while  we  keep  for  ourselves,  the  poor 
wealth  of  such  transparent  puzzles.  Commend  us, 
we  repeat,  %to  Damis  instead,  who  tells  us  in  lan 
guage  that  we  can  understand,  though  not  believe, 
that  he  saw  those  Brahminical  gentlemen  dancing 
on  nothing  two  cubits  from  the  ground  ;  that  the 
fire  which  they  drew  from  the  sun  floated  about 
with  them  in  the  air,  that  they  had  sunshine  and 
shadow  and  rivers  of  wine  at  their  beck  and  call. 


APOLLONIUS   OF    TYANA.  267 

As  Apollonius  drew  near,  the  Brahmins  went 
to  meet  him,  all  save  larchas,  their  Patriarch,  who 
kept  his  seat.  Welcoming  his  guest  in  Greek, 
larchas  asked  him  for  his  letter  of  introduction, 
and,  without  reading  it,  told  him  the  name  of  the 
writer — told  him  that  a  D  had  been  omitted,  told  him 
all  about  his  family,  his  journey,  about  his  friend 
Damis,  about  his  own  exalted  genius  ;  so  that  Apol 
lonius,  astonished  at  such  power,  reverentially  recog 
nizes  a  greater  than  himself,  and  craves  permission, 
which  is  readily  granted,  to  learn  all  the  wisdom  of 
the  Indians.  '  Ask  what  question  you  will ',  said  the 
modest  Patriarch,  '  for  you  have  come  to  men  that 
know  everything.'  '  Do  you  know  yourselves  ?  ' 
asked  Apollonius.  '  We  know  everything,  because 
we  know  ourselves  first,'  was  the  reply.  '  What  do 
you  deem  yourselves  to  be  ?  '  '  Gods.'  '  Why  ? ' 
'  Because  we  are  good  men.'  Apollonius  thought 
this  very  fine,  and  made  use  of  it  in  his  speech 
before  Domitian.  Eve  thought  something  like  this 
very  fine,  and  doubtless  made  use  of  it  in  her  speech 
to  Adam. 

Of  course,  such  eminent  transmigrationists  as 
Apollonius  and  larchas  could  not  come  together 
without  exchanging  '  experiences '  and  '  reminis 
cences  '.  larchas  had  been  a  king,  Apollonius  only 
an  Egyptian  skipper — and  a  lying  one  to  boot; 
but  the  incidents  of  their  former  condition  had 
given  rise  to  a  philosophic  discussion  to  which 
Damis  was  listening  with  an  intent  dulness  pecu 
liarly  his  own,  when  the  king  of  the  country  came 
in  with  the  mien  of  a  suppliant.  Why  the  king  was 
introduced  at  all,  to  mar  the  harmony  of  this  sage 


268  APOLLONIUS   OF   TYANA. 

conversation,  it  is  at  first  hard  to  see.  But  after 
a  while  the  intention  becomes  plainer.  The  king  is 
a  rude,  passionate,  unphilosophical  creature,  who  is 
brought  in  to  be  snubbed,  first  by  the  Brahmins  and 
then  by  Apollonius.  Of  all  the  features  of  Brah- 
minical  life,  the  one  that  the  Greek  philosophers 
admired  most  was  the  reverence  with  which  the 
Indian  sages  were  treated  by  Indian  kings  ;  and  a 
favorite  text  with  them  was  the  respect  due  to 
wisdom  from  power.  In  this  interview  the  king  is 
treated  very  coldly  by  the  native  philosophers,  and 
is  put  to  shame  by  the  foreigner,  who  converts  the 
blundering  monarch,  by  a  rapid  course  of  argu 
ment,  from  an  ignorant  hater  to  a  tearful  admirer  of 
the  Greeks.  The  king  begins  by  thinking  that  the 
Greeks  are  '  corrupt  scoundrels,  insolent  varlets,  the 
trash  and  offscourings  of  creation,  confusion  worse 
confounded,  story-tellers,  miracle-mongers,  poor 
devils  and  thieves ',  and  winds  up  by  pronouncing 
them,  on  very  insufficient  grounds,  '  good  men  and 
true,  gentlemen  and  scholars  '.  These  electric  con 
victions  are  among  the  greatest  miracles  of  the 
book.  After  a  fairy  banquet,  at  which  automata 
act  as  tables  and  waiters,  the  king  withdraws,  and 
Damis  is  allowed  to  come  in  to  pick  up  some  of  the 
crumbs  of  the  wisdom  which  was  broken  so  freely 
at  this  philosophic  feast.  For  all  he  profited,  he 
might  as  well  have  stayed  away;  for  the  grand 
doctrine  of  the  Cosmos  which  he  brought  back  was 
the  same  old  pantheism  that  is  the  first  and  the  last 
word  of  Greek  philosophy.  But  in  this,  as  in  the 
introduction  of  the  king,  there  is  perhaps  a  deep 
design.  The  Hellenic  faith  was  to  be  strengthened 


APOLLONIUS   OF    TYANA.  269 

by  the  proof  that  there  was  no  essential  difference 
between  the  highest  form  of  Oriental  belief  and  the 
creed  of  Pythagoras.  When  the  king  tells  Apol- 
lonius  by  way  of  rebuke,  'You  are  full  of  Phra- 
otes ' — '  I  have  travelled  to  some  purpose ',  he  re- 
joins,  'if  I  am  full  of  Phraotes ', — 'but',  he  adds 
with  significant  self-reliance,  '  if  you  should  meet 
with  Phraotes,  you  would  say  that  he  is  likewise 
full  of  me.'  And  while  Apollonius  tacitly  acknowl 
edges  larchas  as  his  superior,  Damis  takes  care  to 
call  attention  to  the  marvellous  likeness  between  the 
greater  and  the  lesser  light.  This  assertion  of  the 
claims  of  Hellenism  is  one  of  the  leading  points  in 
the  work  of  Philostratus. 

Apollonius  spent  four  months  with  the  Brahmins, 
learned  all  that  they  tad  to  teach  him,  admired  their 
short  method  of  dealing  with  distant  devils  by 
writing  letters  to  them,  and  witnessed  many  of  their 
wonderful  cures.  Much  of  their  talk  was  about 
astrology  and  divination  ;  about  the  secret  power  of 
the  gem  pantarbe  and  the  pigmies  that  live  under 
ground.  Many  animals  of  Greek  fable  they  sneered 
or  denied  out  of  existence,  but  they  swore  to  the 
truth  of  the  gold-digging  griffins  and  the  flaming 
phoenix. 

But  the  last  lesson  was  at  last  given.  larchas 
bade  his  promising  scholar  farewell,  with  the  assur 
ance  that  he  would  be  considered  a  god  in  his 
lifetime  as  well  as  after  death ;  and  Apollonius 
returned  to  startle  the  world  with  proofs  of  his 
divinity.  In  Ionia  the  philosopher  was  welcomed 
by  shoals  of  admirers,  whose  admiration  was  only 


2/O  APOLLONIUS   OF    TYANA. 

heightened  by  his  words  of  wisdom.  Both  Smyrna 
and  Ephesus  had  reason  to  remember  the  great 
man ;  but  it  was  in  Ephesus  especially  that  he 
showed  forth  his  power.  It  was  there  that  he  dis 
played  his  knowledge  of  the  language  of  animals,  a 
science  which  he  had  acquired  in  Arabia.  It  was 
there  that  he  appeared  as  a  father  and  a  saviour 
of  the  people.  To  use  the  tumid  language  of 
Philostratus,  the  tide  of  pestilence  was  swelling  and 
its  waves  were  creeping  up  toward  Ephesus ;  and 
Apollonius  perceived  its  approach,  and  perceiving, 
foretold  it.  He  would  often  stop  in  the  midst  of 
his  discourses  and  cry  aloud  with  threatening  ges 
ture,  '  Earth,  abide  like  unto  thyself.'  '  Save  these.' 
'  Thus  far  shalt  thou  go  and  no  further.'  When  the 
plague  came  Apollonius  was  at  Smyrna.  Recalled 
to  Ephesus  by  an  embassy,  he  said,  '  Let  us  go/ 
and  straightway  was  at  Ephesus ;  just  like  Pythag 
oras,  who  was  at  one  moment  in  Thurii  and  at  the 
next  in  Metapontum.  Thus  miraculously  trans 
ported  to  Ephesus,  Apollonius  told  the  people, 
'  Be  of  good  courage  ;  to-day  I  will  put  an  end  to 
the  plague,'  and  so  saying,  he  led  the  crowd  to  the 
theatre,  where  they  found  the  phantom  of  an  old 
beggar.  His  eyes  were  shut  in  feigned  half-blind 
ness,  his  wallet  held  but  a  crust  of  bread,  his  clothes 
were  in  rags,  his  face  begrimed.  '  Pelt  the  enemy 
of  the  gods,'  cried  Apollonius,  '  pelt  him  with  all 
the  stones  you  can.'  The  old  man  besought  the 
multitude  to  have  mercy  on  him;  but  Apollonius 
urged  them  on,  and  they  began  to  obey.  As  the 
first  drops  of  the  shower  fell,  the  blind  beggar's 
eyes  opened,  flaming  with  fire,  and  the  Ephesians 


APOLLONIUS   OF    TYANA.  2? I 

* 

at  once  recognizing  the  demon,  covered  him  thick 
with  stones.  After  the  wretch  was  killed,  Apollo- 
nius  ordered  the  mound  of  stones  to  be  removed, 
that  the  Ephesians  might  see  what  manner  of 
monster  they  had  slain — and  lo!  the  old  man  had 
vanished,  and  in  his  stead  the  mangled  carcass  of  a 
mastiff  as  big  as  a  lion,  with  the  foam  of  madness 
frothing  from  its  jaws. 

Passing  over  his  curious  interview  with  the 
shade  of  Achilles,  we  next  accompany  the  philo 
sopher  to  Athens.  His  reception  was  highly  flat 
tering.  On  his  way  from  the  port  to  the  city  he 
stumbled  on  one  company  of  ten  young  men  who 
were  just  about  to  take  ship  for  Ionia  in  order  to 
listen  to  his  instructions.  Everybody  turned  round 
to  look  at  him ;  everybody  admired  his  person,  his 
bearing,  his  wisdom.  But  though  the  common 
people  and  the  philosophers  heard  him  gladly,  the 
priests  would  none  of  him ;  and  when  he  applied 
for  initiation  into  the  Eleusinian  mysteries,  he  was 
refused  on  the  ground  of  being  a  magician  and  an 
impostor.  '  My  greatest  crime  ',  said  Apollonius  to 
the  hierophant,  '  is  this — that  I  know  more  about 
the  rite  of  initiation  than  you  do.'  The  multitude 
applauded — for  the  multitude  loves  impudence — 
and  the  hierophant  '  changed  his  tune ',  and  ac 
corded  permission,  which  Apollonius  in  his  turn 
declined.  '  I  shall  be  initiated  hereafter ',  he  said, 
*  and  such  and  such  a  one  shall  initiate  me.'  And 
so  it  was. 

In  reading  the  account  of  the  sojourn  of  Apol 
lonius  at  Athens,  it  is  impossible  to  thrust  out  of  our 
minds  a  far  more  illustrious  pilgrim.  Here,  as  at 


2/2  APOLLONIUS   OF    TYANA. 

Tarsus,  as  at  Ephesus,  the  image  of  the  great 
apostle  to  the  Gentiles  rises  before  us,  and  as  we 
think  over  the  wonderful  sermon  on  Mars  Hill,  we 
feel  how  paltry  in  comparison  is  the  work  of  the 
Gentile  apostle.  Paul  gave  a  new  and  higher  con 
secration  to  the  altar  which  the  Athenians  had 
reared  To  THE  UNKNOWN  GOD;  and  laid  hold  of  the 
hands  that  were  feeling  after  the  Lord,  and  strove 
to  guide  them  where  they  might  find  him.  When 
Apollonius  saw  the  Athenians  at  their  devotions, 
he  did  not  try  to  change  the  direction  of  their  wor 
ship,  he  only  tried  to  change  the  manner  of  it ; 
and,  while  complimenting  them  on  their  receptivity 
for  all  sorts  of  deities,  gave  pedantic  instructions 
about  the  kinds  and  seasons  of  sacrifice,  libation 
and  prayer — partly  to  show  off  his  knowledge, 
partly  to  rebuke  the  man  who  had  rejected  him  at 
Eleusis.  Less  personal  feeling,  less  personal 
vanity,  nay,  a  certain  degree  of  moral  dignity  is 
shown  in  his  sermon  against  the  wanton  celebra 
tion  of  the  games  in  honor  of  Bacchus,  and  in  his 
stern  denunciation  of  gladiatorial  exhibitions.  But 
especially  famous  is  his  adventure  with  the  young 
man  possessed  of  a  devil,  a  scene  which  is  sup 
posed  to  be  modelled  after  the  Gospel  narrative. 
Apollonius  was  lecturing  one  day  about  libations, 
and  how  important  it  was  to  have  handles  made  to 
the  cups,  so  that  the  wine  could  be  poured  out  from 
the  side  of  the  handles,  as  people  were  least  in  the 
habit  of  drinking  from  that  side.  A  jolly  young 
fellow  in  the  audience,  who  was  not  of  a  ritualistic 
turn,  broke  out  into  a  horse-laugh  at  this  refinement, 
and  thus  attracted  the  attention  of  Apollonius.  '  It 


APOLLONIUS   OF   TYANA. 


is  not  you  ',  said  Apollonius,  '  that  insult  me  thus  ; 
but  the  devil  you  are  ridden  by  unawares.'     Up  to 
that  time  the  young  man  had  not  suspected  that  he 
was  devil-ridden,  nor,  in  fact,  had  any  one  else. 
True,   he  was   subject    to    fits   of    uncontrollable 
laughter  followed  by  floods  of  tears,  and  had  a  way 
of  talking  to  himself;  but  it  was  generally  supposed 
that  all  this  was  due  to  a  lively,  excitable  disposi 
tion,  and  not  to  any  indwelling  devil.     Thus  de 
tected,  the  poor  devil  whimpered  and  bullied  by 
turns,  but  finally  promised  Apollonius  to  leave  his 
comfortable  abode  and  never  to  enter  the  body  of 
any  human  being.     Apollonius  bade  him  begone 
and  give  some  outward  sign  of  his  going.     '  I  will 
cast  down  yonder  statue,'  said  the  devil  ;  and  with 
that  the  statue  nodded  and  fell.     Rubbing  his  eyes 
as  if  waking  from  sleep,  the  young  man  was  over 
whelmed  with  shame  at  seeing  the  gaze  of  all  fixed 
upon  him  ;  and  now  being  rid  of  the  devil,  left  off 
his  wild  habits  and  his  fine  clothes,  and  fell  in  love 
with  philosophic  shabbiness  and  philosophic  dirt. 
We  leave  the  reader  to  decide  whether  the  resem 
blance  of  this  story  to  any  of  the  similar  Gospel 
narratives  is  due  to  the  elements  which  are  neces 
sarily    common,   or  to   a   direct  appropriation  of 
material. 

On  his  way  to  Corinth  from  Athens,  Apollonius 
uttered  a  prophecy  which  Philostratus  gravely 
records  or  gravely  invents.  It  is  a  fair  sample  of 
all  the  prophecies  of  Apollonius,  and  is  too  absurd 
for  caricature.  Imagine  one  of  the  Old  Testament 
prophets  lifting  up  his  voice,  crying  aloud  and 
sparing  not,  saying,  '  The  burden  of  the  Isthmus. 


2/4  APOLLONIUS   OF   TYANA. 

This  neck  of  land  shall  be  cut,  or  rather  it  shall  not 
be  cut/  Of  course  this  prophecy  was  '  fulfilled '. 
At  Corinth  he  released  a  young  philosopher  from 
the  meshes  of  an  Empusa,  a  sort  of  vampire  Venus, 
such  as  we  find  in  the  unsentimental  legends  of  the 
middle  ages.  At  Sparta  he  cast  out  of  the  entire 
people  the  devil  of  luxury,  and  brought  them  back 
to  the  institutions  of  Lycurgus.  '  Sparta'  and  '  Ly- 
curgus '  have  a  strange  sound  in  the  first  century 
after  Christ,  and  it  was  of  course  a  sham  Sparta 
and  a  sham  people  that  Apollonius  reformed ;  but 
it  is  true  that  about  that  time  Nero  allowed  the 
Greek  states  a  kind  of  mock  independence ;  and 
we  read  that  Vespasian  offended  the  philosopher 
mortally  by  putting  an  abrupt  end  to  the  farce. 
One  of  these  papier-mache  imitations  of  the  iron 
Spartans  asked  Apollonius  how  the  gods  were  to 
be  worshipped.  'As  masters.'  'How  heroes?' 
'As  fathers.'  '  How  men  ? '  '  Your  question  is  un- 
Spartan,'  he  replied ;  and  un-Spartan  was  the 
excitement  of  the  people  when  a  scolding  letter 
came  from  Nero.  Fight  they  could  not;  to  beg 
off  they  were  ashamed ;  and  a  saucy  reply  was 
more  than  they  dared  send.  In  their  extremity 
they  applied  to  Apollonius.  Apollonius  gave  them 
his  counsel  in  his  usual  pithy  and  affected  style. 
'  Palamedes ',  he  said,  *  invented  letters  to  teach  men 
not  only  to  write,  but  also  what  not  to  write.'  They 
caught  at  his'meaning — as  if  one  were  to  say  how 
'  Jonas  Hanway  introduced  the  umbrella  to  teach 
men  not  only  to  shelter  themselves  from  the  rain, 
but  also  when  not  to  shelter  themselves  from  the 
rain.' 


APOLLONIUS   OF    TYANA.  2/5 

In  obedience  to  a  vision,  Apollonius  took  Crete 
on  his  way  to  Rome,  and  while  there  he  was  the 
witness  of  a  terrible  earthquake.  Thunder  re 
sounded  from  the  earth  beneath,  and  the  sea 
receded  some  seven  stadia  from  the  shore.  All 
were  frightened,  but  Apollonius  stood  firmt  *  Be 
of  good  courage  ',  said  he,  'the  sea  hath  given  birth 
to  land.'  And  it  turned  out  just  as  he  said.  The 
sea  had  brought  forth  a  fine  island,  and  both 
mother  and  child  were  doing  well. 

Before  Apollonius  reached  Rome,  all  but  a  faith 
ful  few  forsook  him  and  fled;  for  Nero  had  just 
published  an  edict  against  philosophers,  and  the 
gentlemen  of  that  profession  were  hurrying  out  of 
town  with  most  unphilosophic  speed.  The  day 
after  his  arrival,  Apollonius  was  summoned  before 
the  consul,  who  was  of  a  pious  turn  of  mind,  and 
readily  granted  him  permission  to  live  in  the  tem 
ples.  But  Tigellinus,  the  prefect  of  the  Praetorian 
guard,  had  his  suspicions  roused.  The  philosopher 
was  evidently  a  magician  and  an  astrologer,  and 
showed  a  marvellous  insight  into  the  future.  '  There 
had  been',  says  Philostratus,  'an  eclipse  of  the  sun, 
and  thunder  with  it ;  a  thing  that  very  rarely  happens 
during  an  eclipse :  and  Apollonius,  looking  up  to 
the  sky,  said,  "  A  great  thing  shall  come  to  pass,  and 
it  shall  not  come  to  pass."  And  those  who  were 
present  when  he  said  this  could  not  yet  make  out 
what  was  meant,  but  on  the  third  day  after  the 
eclipse  they  all  understood  the  oracle.  For  as 
Nero  was  dining,  a  thunderbolt  struck  the  table, 
passing  through  the  cup,  which  was  in  his  hand  and 
not  far  from  his  mouth.  Now  it  was  this  narrow 


2/6  APOLLONIUS   OF   TYANA. 

escape  of  Nero's  from  being  struck  that  Apollonius 
meant  by  saying  that  something  great  should  come 
to  pass  and  should  not  come  to  pass.'  But  even 
after  this  wonderful  fulfilment  of  prophecy,  Tigel- 
linus  contented  himself  with  having  Apollonius 
watched,  and  did  not  summon  him  until  he  heard  of 
a  sneering  remark  that  the  philosopher  had  made 
about  Nero.  Apollonius  appeared:  Tigellinus  opened 
the  bill  of  '  delation  ' ;  it  was  a  blank.  Frightened 
at  this,  the  prefect  took  the  accused  into  a  private 
chamber,  where  the  philosopher  frightened  him  still 
more  by  his  mysterious  answers,  until  he  was  but 
too  glad  to  get  this  terrible  stranger  out  of  Rome. 

However,  Apollonius  did  not  leave  Rome  without 
giving  another  signal  manifestation  of  his  divine 
power.  He  met  a  funeral  procession,  a  maiden 
borne  to  the  grave,  the  expectant  bridegroom  follow 
ing  the  corpse  with  loud  lamentations,  and  Rome 
joining  in  the  grief,  for  the  maiden  was  of  a  consular 
house.  'Set  down  the  bier',  said  Apollonius, '  for 
I  will  dry  your  tears  for  the  maiden.  Tell  me  her 
name.'  And  then  merely  touching  her,  and  saying 
a  few  words  in  an  inaudible  tone,  he  woke  her  from 
her  seeming  death.  The  parents  offered  him  mag 
nificent  presents.  He  gave  them  back  as  a  dowry  for 
the  girl  whom  he  had  brought  to  life.  Philostratus 
himself  leaves  it  undecided  whether  Apollonius 
really  rekindled  an  extinguished  life  or  found  a  vital 
spark  remaining ;  for  they  said  that  it  was  drizzling 
at  the  time,  and  that  her  face  sent  up  a  steam  from 
the  contact  with  the  air,  thus  showing  that  her  body 
was  not  cold  in  death.  The  resemblance  to  the 
Gospel  story  of  the  young  man  of  Nain  is  striking, 


APOLLONIUS    OF   TYANA.  2// 

but  Philostratus  seems  rather  to  have  had  in  his 
mind  the  pagan  story  of  Alcestis ;  and  the  dramatic 
points  of  meeting  the  procession  and  ordering  the 
bier  to  be  set  down  are  so  natural  that  the  coincid 
ence  is  not  to  be  insisted  on.  Did  Shakespeare 
borrow  the  scene  in  which  Richard  III  meets  the 
funeral  procession  of  Henry  VI  and  orders  the  bier 
to  be  set  down  ? 

We  must  pass  over  the  short  sojourn  of  Apol- 
lonius  in  Spain,  his  visit  to  Sicily,  and  his  return  to 
Greece,  where  he  was  initiated  into  the  Eleusinian 
mysteries  in  accordance  with  his  prediction.  In 
Egypt  Apollonius  appears  in  a  new  capacity.  He 
reached  Alexandria  in  a  time  of  great  political 
excitement,  and  this  simple  philosopher  rode  trium 
phant  on  the  whirlwind  unseen  to  vulgar  eyes,  who 
beheld  him  only  as  a  sage  and  a  prophet.  In  fulfil 
ment  of  a  Sicilian  prophecy  of  Apollonius,  Galba 
had  fallen  before  Otho,  Otho  before  Vitellius,  and 
Vespasian  was  expected  to  put  an  end  to  the 
inglorious  rule  of  the  last  of  the  three.  While 
waiting  to  give  Vespasian  his  orders,  Apollonius 
awed  the  frivolous  Alexandrians  by  his  imposing 
presence  and  by  his  wonderful  wisdom.  Here  too 
he  was  a  reformer  and  a  saviour.  He  rescued  from 
execution  a  poor  creature  who  had  borne  false  witness 
against  himself  through  fear  of  torture.  He  read 
an  Egyptian  priest  a  pedantic  lecture  about  the 
proper  method  of  sacrificing.  He  fulminated  against 
the  foolish  love  of  chariot-racing,  which  led  the 
Alexandrians  so  often  to  bloody  fights.  But  much  as 
the  Alexandrians  respected  Apollonius,  they  could 
hardly  have  been  prepared  for  the  reverence  which 


278  APOLLONIUS   OF    TYANA. 

the  emperor  that  was  to  be  paid  the  great  philoso 
pher.  It  was  the  Indian  king  and  larchas  over 
again.  Scarcely  had  Vespasian  finished  his  sacri 
fices,  scarcely  had  he  given  an  answer  to  the 
deputations  of  the  different  cities,  when  he  addressed 
Apollonius  in  the  form  of  a  suppliant :  '  Make  me 
Emperor.'  '  I  have  done  so/  replied  Apollonius 
graciously.  '  In  begging  the  gods  for  an  Emperor 
that  should  be  a  just  man  and  a  gentleman,  adorned 
with  grey  hair,  and  a  true  father — in  begging  for 
such  an  Emperor  I  begged  for  you.'  In  response 
to  this  compliment,  Vespasian  raised  his  hands 
toward  heaven  and  prayed :  '  May  I  be  ruler  over 
wise  men,  and  wise  men  rulers  over  me.'  The  wise 
men  who  were  in  Vespasian's  train  seemed  dis 
posed  to  secure  the  latter  half  of  this  prayer,  and 
not  disinclined  to  share  the  rule  with  Apollonius.  But 
in  the  course  of  a  great  discussion  which  took  place 
in  the  privy  council,  the  philosophers  of  the  house, 
Euphrates  and  Dion,  were  injudicious  enough  or 
honest  enough  to  speak  in  favor  of  reestablishing 
the  republic,  while  Apollonius,  dropping  his  pithy, 
sententious  style,  harangued  in  favor  of  the  assump 
tion  of  the  empire.  As  this  advice  tallied  with 
Vespasian's  own  inclination,  Apollonius  became 
omnipotent,  and  Euphrates  envious.  This  was  the 
beginning  of  hostilities  that  were  never  intermitted. 
A  large  proportion  of  the  letters  of  Apollonius  are 
devoted  to  the  rasping  of  this  rival,  who  was  an 
historical  personage,  and,  according  to  high  author 
ity,  one  of  the  purest  of  characters  and  one  of  the 
most  agreeable  of  companions.  But  agreeable  and 
pure  as  he  was,  according  to  Pliny,  he  was  very 


APOLLONIUS   OF   TV  ANA. 


malevolent,  according  to  Philostratus,  and  did  all 
that  he  could  to  injure  the  credit  of  Apollonius  in 
Egypt,  and  years  afterwards  sent  information  against 
him  to  Rome.  But  between  Vespasian  and  Apol 
lonius  no  shadow  of  trouble  arose  while  they  were 
together;  and  indeed  the  whole  account  of  the 
interview  is  ludicrously  sentimental.  Imagine  that 
tough,  stingy  old  sinner  of  a  Vespasian  protesting 
against  the  root  of  all  evil  and  throwing  his  heart 
wide  open  to  Apollonius  !  Imagine  him  begging 
Apollonius  to  remember  him  in  his  prayers,  in  very 
much  the  tone  in  which  Hamlet  addresses  Ophelia! 
Alas  !  the  harmony  of  these  two  beautiful  souls  was 
not  to  be  of  long  duration.  Vespasian  withdrew 
from  the  Greek  states  the  independence  they  had 
forfeited,  and  Apollonius  withdrew  from  him  his 
personal  friendship,  as  may  be  seen  from  some  of 
his  waspish  letters. 

Apollonius  —  To  the  Emperor  Vespasian:  You 
have  enslaved  Greece,  they  say,  and  you  think  that 
you  have  done  more  than  Xerxes.  You  do  not 
know  that  you  have  done  worse  than  Xerxes  ;  for 
Nero  might  have  done  it,  but  would  not.  Farewell. 

From  the  same  —  To  the  same  :  You,  who  are  on 
such  bad  terms  with  the  Greeks  as  to  reduce  them 
to  slavery  —  what  do  you  want  with  my  society  ? 
Farewell. 

From  the  same  —  To  the  same:  Nero  liberated 
the  Greeks  in  sport.  You  enslaved  them  in  earnest. 
Farewell. 

The  greater  part  of  the  sixth  book  of  Philo 
stratus  is  taken  up  with  an  account  of  the  journey  of 
Apollonius  to  the  Gymnosophists,  or  naked  philo- 


280  APOLLONIUS    OF   TYANA. 

sophers,  whom  Philostratus  has  transplanted  without 
hesitation  from  their  home  in  India,  where  they  are 
known  as  Fakirs,  to  the  region  of  the  Nile.  The 
word  gymnos  does  not  necessarily  mean  mother- 
naked;  and  as  these  Egyptian  philosophers  wore 
light  summer  clothes,  we  might,  if  dignity  allowed 
it,  translate  the  title  for  the  benefit  of  our  un-Grecian 
readers  by  '  Sages  of  the  Shirt',  These  Gymno- 
sophists,  we  are  told,  were  much  further  below  the 
Indians  in  wisdom  than  they  were  above  the  Egyp 
tians  ;  and  Apollonius  seems  to  have  started  on  his 
journey  with  a  feeling  of  resignation  to  his  own 
superiority.  Even  before  his  arrival  he  spoke  dis 
paragingly  of  the  Gymnosophists  for  not  cleansing 
a  suppliant  of  theirs  from  blood-guiltiness,  and 
showed  his  reprobation  of  their  course  by  per 
forming  the  purification  himself;  and  prepared  as 
he  was  to  think  lightly  of  them,  we  can  readily 
understand  that  their  cool  reception  of  him  was  not 
suited  to  flatter  the  lively  susceptibilities  of  a  man 
so  jealous  of  his  divinity.  Euphrates,  his  arch 
enemy,  had,  by  means  of  an  emissary,  poisoned  the 
minds  of  the  Gymni  against  their  coming  guest,  and 
while  they  did  not  decline  his  visit,  they  postponed 
the  conference.  Meantime  they  asked  him  what 
his  object  was,  and  invited  him  to  repose  under  a 
portico  which  they  had  built  solely  for  the  accom 
modation  of  strangers — as  they  themselves  lived  in 
the  open  air.  Apollonius — most  pettish  of  apos 
tles — answered  abruptly :  '  Why  do  you  ask  me 
what  I  want  ?  The  Indians  knew  without  asking. 
Don't  talk  to  me  about  your  roof.  You  have  got  a 
climate  in  which  any  man  can  live  without  clothes.' 


APOLLONIUS   OF    TYANA.  28 1 

It  is  to  be  hoped  that  he  felt  more  comfortable  after 
getting  in  those  neat  little  blows. 

The  next  morning  the  Gymni  came  to  see  him 
in  a  body.  'And  well  you  might,'  said  Apollonius, 
'  I  came  all  the  way  from  the  coast  to  see  you.' 
This  was  a  snappish  prelude  to  the  debates  between 
Apollonius  and  the  Gymni ;  and  in  fact  these  long 
discussions  are  interesting  chiefly  as  they  show  a 
very  bad  temper  on  the  part  of  the  disputants. 
The  Head-Gymnus  and  Apollonius  try  each  to 
play  the  tutor  to  the  other.  His  High  Nakedness 
or  Naked  Highness  begins  his  discourse  by  run 
ning  down  the  magic  arts  of  the  Indians.  '  True 
philosophy ',  said  he, '  dispenses  with  outside  shows. 
Not  that  we  have  not  the  power.  Elm,  salute  Pro 
fessor  Apollonius.'  The  elm  saluted  him  in  a  clear, 
articulate,  female  voice.  '  It  is  not,  then,  that  we 
have  not  the  power.  We  can  do  such  things,  but 
we  despise  them.  Our  philosophy  needs  no  mere 
tricious  ornament.  Such  bedizening  we  leave  to 
the  Indians.  Before  you  stand  the  two  systems  as 
Vice  and  Virtue  stood  before  Hercules.  Choose 
you  this  day  which  you  will  serve.'  Apollonius 
did  not  and  could  not  contain  himself  for  indigna 
tion.  Had  he  been  one  of  the  vulgar  he  would 
have  said,  '  You  are  teaching  a  dolphin  how  to 
swim,'  which  was  the  Greek  way  of  teaching  one's 
grandmother  how  to  suck  eggs.  As  it  was,  he  was 
pointed  enough.  '  Whom  are  you  lecturing  ? '  he 
said  in  substance.  '  I  am  older  than  any  of  you, 
except  his  High  Nakedness.  I  have  already  chosen 
for  myself,  and  I  am  better  fit  this  day  to  teach  you 
than  you  to  teach  me.  I  am  now  what  I  was  at 


282  APOLLONIUS   OF    TYANA. 

first — a  Pythagorean.  Desirous  of  going  back  to 
the  sources  of  that  sublime  philosophy,  in  my 
youth  and  ignorance,  I  was  about  to  turn  to  you. 
But  my  teacher  told  me  that  you  had  your  wisdom 
at  second  hand  from  the  Brahmins,  and  so  I  went 
to  them  first.  Now,  mark  you,  not  a  word  against 
the  Indians ;  nay,  I  would  rather  advise  you  to 
recant  what  you  have  said  already.  All  have  the 
wish  to  rise  from  earth  and  be  lifted  up  together 
with  God.  All  have  the  wish — the  Indians  alone 
have  the  power.'  At  the  conclusion  of  his  master's 
harangue,  poor  affectionate  Damis  drew  a  long 
breath  of  relief,  and  his  High  Nakedness  Thespe- 
sion  blushed  '  a  blush  that  could  be  seen  through 
his  black  skin'.  Apollonius  followed  up  his  ad- 
vantange  by  berating  the  Gymni  soundly  for  put 
ting  any  confidence  in  the  calumnies  of  his  enemy 
Euphrates,  and  told  them  that  by  their  credulity 
they  had  forfeited  the  title  of  philosophers.  The 
half-apologies  of  the  Gymni  did  not  soothe  the 
irritated  spirit  of  Apollonius,  and  the  philosophic 
discussions  which  ensued  were  far  different  from 
the  sweet  interchange  of  genius  and  admiration  that 
made  the  sojourn  among  Brahmins  so  delightful. 
There  is  something  peculiarly  feline  in  the  sputter- 
ings  of  the  self-conceited  disciple  of  the  Indians 
and  the  self-conceited  Sages  of  the  Shirt,  and  we 
rejoice  to  leave  their  cataracts  of  words  for  the 
cataracts  of  the  Nile.  But  before  Apollonius  left 
Ethiopia,  by  way  of  a  parting  fling  at  the  Gymni, 
he  performed  the  miracle  of  taming  a  satyr  who  had 
proved  unmanageable  by  all  the  arts  of  the  naked 
philosophers.  For  this  frolicsome  rascal,  who  had 


APOLLONIUS   OF    TYANA.  283 

been  maltreating  some  of  the  Ethiopian  ladies, 
Apollonius  laid  a  trap  by  having  the  sheep-trough 
of  the  haunted  village  filled  with  wine.  The  wine 
disappeared  mysteriously,  and  Apollonius  led  the 
villagers  to  a  cave  of  the  nymphs,  where  they  found 
the  satyr  asleep.  '  Don't  b^at  him  or  curse  him,' 
said  Apollonius.  '  He  has  stopped  his  nonsense.' 
But  if  the  satyr  had  stopped  his  nonsense,  not  so 
Philostratus,  for  he  assures  us  with  the  utmost 
seriousness  that  there  are  such  beings  as  satyrs, 
and  that  the  mother  of  one  of  his  friends  used  to 
receive  the  visits  of  one  of  these  gentlemen,  who 
appeared  in  a  fawn-skin  overcoat  that  grew  out  of 
his  back,  while  the  fore-legs  lapped  over  his  satyric 
chest  and  made  a  dainty  collar  for  his  neck. 

At  the  time  when  Apollonius  left  Egypt,  Titus 
had  just  taken  Jerusalem  ;  and  Apollonius  compli 
mented  him  on  his  giving  God  all  the  glory,  and 
on  his  refusing  to  be  crowned  for  shedding  human 
blood.  '  I  have  taken  Jerusalem,'  replied  Titus ; 
'  you  have  taken  me  ' ;  and  in  a  personal  interview 
with  the  future  Emperor,  Apollonius  seems  to  have 
taken  him  literally ;  for  he  treated  Titus  with  the 
same  arrogant  assumption  with  which  he  had 
treated  his  father  Vespasian,  talked  to  him  as  if  he 
were  a  boy,  set  him  some  excellent  copy-book 
maxims,  and  commended  him  to  the  tutorship  of 
one  Demetrius,  a  philosopher  of  the  Cynic  sect.  Of 
course,  during  the  whole  interview,  Titus  is  as 
humble  in  the  presence  of  Apollonius  as  the  poor, 
besotted  king  of  India  in  the  presence  of  the  Brah 
mins. 

After  his  return  from  Egypt,  Apollonius  confined 


284  APOLLONIUS   OF   TYANA. 

himself  to  a  narrower  circle  of  travel,  and  the  ac 
count  of  his  performances  between  the  meeting  with 
Titus  and  the  trial  before  Domitian  is  very  meagre. 
To-day  he  cures  a  crazy  passion  for  a  statue  of 
Venus ;  to-morrow  the  bite  of  a  mad  dog ;  and 
every  now  and  then  he  brings  an  obstreperous 
earthquake  to  its  senses.  Here  a  young  man  is 
diverted  from  a  foolish  fancy  for  teaching  birds  to 
talk ;  and  there  an  old  man  is  directed  to  a  hidden 
treasure,  which  enables  him  to  marry  off  his 
daughters ;  but  the  biographer  is  evidently  growing 
weary  of  the  catalogue  of  marvels,  and  after  sum 
ming  up  the  wonderful  works  of  his  hero,  gathers 
together  all  his  rhetorical  faculties  for  the  grand 
tableau,  '  Apollonius  before  Domitian  '. 

Apollonius  was  suspected,  and  not  unjustly 
suspected,  as  it  seems,  of  an  inclination  to  political 
intrigue.  In  Nero's  time  he  had  been  privy  to  the 
plans  of  Vindex ;  and  he  was  known  to  be  intimate 
with  Nerva,  whom  Domitian  had  banished  from  the 
city  and  was  seeking  an  opportunity  to  destroy. 
The  bold  expressions  of  Apollonius  in  regard  to 
Domitian  could  not  be  kept  from  the  knowledge 
of  the  Emperor,  and  one  speech  particularly  was 
duly  reported  by  Euphrates,  his  old  rival.  '  Fool ', 
cried  Apollonius,  apostrophizing  a  statue  of  Domi 
tian  at  Smyrna ,  '  fool ',  he  cried,  '  how  little  you 
understand  the  Fates  and  Necessity.  For  he  who 
is  destined  to  reign  after  you  shall  live  again  even 
if  you  kill  him.'  For  the  utterance  of  this  predic 
tion  Apollonius  was  summoned  to  appear  before 
Caesar's  judgment-seat,  but  'by  a  divine  insight' 
anticipating  the  summons,  he  went  of  his  own  accord 


APOLLONIUS   OF   TYANA.  28$ 

to  Italy,  landing  where  Paul  landed,  at  Puteoli. 
There  he  met  his  friend  Demetrius,  the  same  man  to 
whose  philosophic  care  he  had  commended  Titus ; 
and  this  Demetrius  urged  him  to  avoid  the  certain 
death  that  awaited  him  at  Rome.  This  advice 
tallied  with  the  bent  of  Damis,  a  faithful  soul  but  a 
cowardly,  whose  faithfulness  through  all  his  coward 
ice  reminds  us  again  of  his  antitype,  Sancho.  At 
this  crisis,  Damis  musters  up  courage  to  show  his 
lack  of  it ;  and  his  speech  is  a  masterpiece,  which 
must  be  marred  in  any  translation,  still  more  in  our 
partial  reproduction.  '  Thank  you ',  said  he,  in 
substance,  '  good  master  Demetrius,  for  your  kind 
ness  in  coming  here.  Nobody  minds  me,  and  if  it 
had  not  been  for  you,  I  should  never  have  known 
what  this  journey  meant,  for  I  stick  to  my  master 
closer  than  his  shadow ;  and  if  anybody  were  to  ask 
me  where  I  am  going  to  or  what  I  am  going  for, 
what  a  ridiculous  figure  I  should  cut !  Whereas,  if 
I  knew,  I  should  at  least  have  the  comfort  of  saying : 
Why,  Apollonius  is  dead  in  love  with  death,  and  I 
am  his  rival.  Now,  if  I  should  come  to  grief,  small 
loss  would  that  be  to  philosophy.  I  am  nothing 
but  the  humble  squire  to  a  valiant  knight.  But,  if 
he  is  killed,  philosophy  itself  is  vanquished.  Now, 
I  believe  in  dying  for  the  good  of  philosophy ;  but 
as  for  dying  to  the  hurt  of  philosophy,  that  is  a 
thing  I  don't  desire  either  for  myself  or  for  any  one 
who  is  a  friend  to  philosophy  and  Apollonius/  No 
wonder  that  after  this  simple-hearted,  affectionate 
speech,  Apollonius  pardons  the  ignorance  of  Damis, 
and  restricts  his  reply  to  the  refutation  of  the  argu 
ments  of  Demetrius.  Of  course,  both  Demetrius  and 


286  APOLLONIUS   OF   TYANA. 

Damis  were  overcome  by  the  prevalent  eloquence 
of  Apollonius.  Demetrius  bade  his  friend  farewell 
with  a  tear,  sorrowing  for  fear  he  should  not  see  his 
face  again ;  but  Damis  would  not  desert  his  master. 
Apollonius  gave  him  his  choice  between  going  and 
staying.  Without  a  moment's  hesitation  he  decided 
upon  going. 

Reaching  Rome,  Apollonius  found  a  friend  at 
court  in  the  prefect  of  the  Praetorian  Guard,  who 
had  tried  to  calm  the  Emperor  down  before  the 
arrival  of  the  accused,  and  who  gave  Apollonius 
valuable  hints  as  to  the  character  of  the  charges  and 
the  conduct  of  the  trial.  The  main  count  of  the 
accusation  was  a  very  common  one  in  those  times ; 
and  in  memory  of  the  good  old  days  of  martyrdom, 
the  charge  was  often  trumped  up  in  the  middle  ages, 
by  the  Christians  against  the  Jews.  Apollonius — 
so  ran  the  accusation — had  gone  to  Nerva's  country- 
seat,  and  there,  at  dead  of  night,  when  the  moon 
was  on  the  wane,  had  cut  up  a  boy  for  Nerva ;  and 
by  the  favorable  indications  of  the  victim  had 
encouraged  the  aspirant  to  the  throne,  who  was  at 
the  time  sacrificing  against  Domitian.  After  giving 
Apollonius  this  information,  the  prefect  left  him 
closely  guarded ;  assuming,  as  he  went  away,  the 
appearance  of  great  indignation,  in  order  to  avert 
any  suspicion  of  good  will  toward  the  accused.  On 
the  return  of  the  prefect,  Apollonius  was  put  in  a 
sort  of  gentlemen's  prison,  where  he  was  not  sub 
jected  to  the  indignity  and  discomfort  of  irons,  and 
where  he  had  the  satisfaction  of  lecturing  on  moral 
philosophy  to  his  fellow-prisoners.  One  morning 
early,  after  several  days  of  detention,  he  was  ordered 


APOLLONIUS   OF    TYANA.  287 

to  appear  before  the  Emperor  at  noon.  Instead  of 
thinking  about  his  defence,  he  made  an  allegorical 
joke  or  two  to  Damis,  took  a  nap  and  started  for 
the  palace,  attended  by  four  guards,  who  kept  at  an 
unusually  respectful  distance.  As  they  drew  near 
the  palace,  he  said,  '  Why,  Damis,  this  looks  like  a 
public  bath.  Those  who  are  out  are  trying  to  get 
in,  and  those  who  are  in  are  trying  to  get  out — 
the  great  washed  and  the  great  unwashed.'  '  I  wish ', 
remarks  Philostratus  hereupon, — '  I  wish  people 
would  not  steal  this  good  thing  from  Apollonius 
and  ascribe  it  to  Tom,  Dick  and  Harry.  It  is  most 
certainly  his,  and  he  has  used  it  in  one  of  his  letters.' 
We  must  say  that  this  great  ado  about  so  feeble  a 
joke,  if  joke  it  may  be  called,  reflects  as  much  on 
the  credit  of  Philostratus  as  on  the  wit  of  Apollonius. 
When  Apollonius  was  introduced  into  the  pres 
ence  of  the  Emperor,  Domitian  was  thrown  off  his 
balance  by  the  external  appearance  of  the  wonderful 
personage,  and  cried  out  to  the  prefect,  '  You  have 
brought  me  in  a  demon.'  Of  course  Apollonius, 
with  his  irresistible  passion  for  playing  the  school 
master,  began  to  read  the  Emperor  a  lecture  on  his 
blindness  of  mind ;  but  Domitian  was  not  to  be 
trifled  with  in  that  way.  He  was  no  Damis,  no 
Indian  king.  '  I  know  all  about  you/  he  said.  '  I 
know  how  you  carried  on  with  Nerva,  just  as  well 
as  if  I  had  been  there  myself.'  '  It  is  disgraceful,' 
said  Apollonius  in  reply, '  disgraceful  and  illegal  to 
try  a  case  about  which  you  have  made  up  your 
mind,  or  to  have  made  up  your  mind  about  a  case 
which  you  have  not  tried ' :  but  this  apt  antithesis 
Domitian  disposed  of  by  having  the  philosopher's 


288  APOLLONIUS   OF    TYANA. 

beard  and  hair  shorn  off,  and  by  ordering  him  to 
be  fettered  in  a  dungeon  with  the  vilest  malefactors. 
While  in  this  dungeon,  Apollonius  showed  his 
insight  into  human  character  by  detecting  a  spy  who 
came  to  sympathize  with  him  in  his  troubles,  and 
manifested  his  divine  power  by  slipping  his  leg  out 
of  the  irons  with  which  he  was  bound.  But  as 
Damis  saw  through  the  designs  of  the  informer,  and 
as  many  a  jail-bird  has  performed  the  trick  of  get 
ting  his  irons  off  and  on,  we  are  not  much  amazed, 
unless  it  be  at  the  gravity  with  which  Philostratus 
insists  that  this  latter  feat  is  to  be  attributed  to  the 
divine  nature  of  Apollonius  and  not  to  any  magic 
art. 

Before  the  second  hearing  came  on,  Apollonius 
sent  his  faithful  squire  to  Puteoli,  there  to  await  his 
appearance.  'Alive  or  what?'  asked  Damis. 
'  Alive,  as  I  think,'  replied  Apollonius,  with  a  smile, 
'  as  you  think,  come  to  life  again.'  But  the  great 
trial  turned  out  to  be  a  great  farce.  Ail  the  prepa 
rations  were  made  for  a  grand  scene.  The  Emperor 
was  there.  In  his  feverish  excitement  he  had  eaten 
nothing  for  twenty-four  hours.  The  emissaries  of 
Euphrates  were  there  to  bear  witness  against  his 
arch-enemy.  A  large  crowd  was  there  to  hear  the 
trial  of  the  arch-magician.  Apollonius  was  there, 
*  or  rather  was  not  there ',  for  he  looked  at  the  ceil 
ing  with  apparent  unconcern,  and  took  an  absent- 
minded  want  of  notice  of  all  intimations  that  he 
was  to  look  at  the  Emperor.  The  accusation  con 
sisted  of  four  counts.  As  each  count  was  presented, 
Apollonius  put  it  aside  with  a  few  words,  and  aston 
ished  the  audience  by  the  ease  and  completeness  of 


APOLLONIUS    OF    TYANA.  289 

his  refutations.  Domitian  himself  dismissed  the 
case.  'I  acquit  you/  he  said,  'but  remain  here 
until  we  have  had  a  private  interview.'  '  Thank  you, 
sire/ he  replied.  'These  miserable  informers  have 
ruined  the  cities  of  your  empire,  have  filled  the 
islands  with  exiles,  the  continent  with  lamentation, 
the  army  with  cowardice,  the  senate  with  suspicion. 
Give  me,  too,  a  chance  to  speak  my  mind,  or  else  send 
and  seize  my  body,  for  my  soul  cannot  be  seized — 
and  even  my  body  you  cannot  seize.  "  For  ",  in  the 
words  of  Apollo  : 

"  For  me  you  never  shall  destroy ;  I  was  not  born  to  die."  M 

And  so  saying,  he  vanished  from  the  court-room, 
leaving — what  his  biographer  would  never  have 
done — a  written  speech  undelivered.  But,  of  course, 
Philostratus  has  no  intention  of  letting  his  reader 
off  as  cheaply  as  Apollonius  did  the  Emperor,  and 
presents  us  with  a  formal  oration,  which  we  shall 
avoid  by  clinging  to  the  skirts  of  Apollonius  as  he 
is  spirited  off  to  Puteoli.  Damis,  who  had  been 
sent  back  to  Puteoli,  took  nearly  three  days  to 
make  the  journey  ;  and  yet,  on  the  very  day  of  the 
trial,  as  he  was  making  his  moan  to  Demetrius  and 
saying  '  Shall  we  ever  see  our  noble  friend  ? ' 
Apollonius  appeared  and  said,  '  Ye  shall  see  me,  or 
rather  ye  have  seen  me/  '  Or  rather ',  of  itself, 
would  have  been  proof  enough  for  us,  but  Deme 
trius  was  not  satisfied.  'Are  you  alive?'  he  in 
quired,  'for  if  you  are  dead,  we  have  not  got 
through  weeping  for  you.'  Thereupon  Apollonius 
extended  his  hand  and  said,  '  Lay  hold  of  me.  If 

1  ov  yap  fj,e  KT€ve€is,  fivf>  oti  rot  fj.6po-ifj.6s  flp-i.     II.  xxii.  13. 


2QO  APOLLONIUS   OF    TYANA. 

I  escape  your  grasp,  I  am  a  shade  from  the  realms 
of  Proserpine.  If  my  body  resist  the  pressure,  per 
suade  Damis  that  I  am  alive  and  have  not  laid 
down  my  body.'  Tableau. 

The  remaining  adventures  of  Apollonius  add 
little  or  nothing  to  the  characteristics  of  the  man, 
and  we  have  but  one  famous  story  to  reproduce 
before  we  dismiss  the  hero  of  this  religious  ro- 
man  ce.  This  story  is  confirmed  byother  testimony 
than  that  of  Philostratus.  It  is  the  celebrated 
vision  of  the  assassination  of  Domitian. 

Domitian  was  assassinated  at  Rome.  The  assas 
sination  was  seen  by  Apollonius  at  Ephesus. 
Attacked  by  Stephanus,  the  Emperor,  though  se 
verely  wounded  in  the  thigh,  turned  on  his  assailant 
and  grappled  him.  A  vigorous  man  and  in  the 
prime  of  life,  Domitian  was  a  formidable  antago 
nist.  He  got  his  assassin  down,  choked  him, 
gouged  his  eyes,  and  battered  his  jaws  with  the 
bottom  of  a  golden  cup  that  was  at  hand,  and  all 
the  while  kept  calling  on  Minerva  to  help  him. 
The  body-guard,  hearing  that  he  was  in  a  bad  way, 
rushed  in,  and  when  they  found  that  he  was  fainting, 
despatched  the  tyrant.  All  this  time,  undisturbed 
by  the  slight  difference  in  longitude,  Apollonius 
was  gazing  from  Ephesus  at  the  animated  scene. 
In  the  midst  of  his  noon-day  talk  he  stopped,  as 
one  frightened,  and  lowered  his  voice;  then  he 
went  on  with  less  than  his  usual  vigor,  as  people  do 
when  they  look  away  at  something  while  they  are 
talking.  Then  he  stopped  altogether,  like  a  man 
who  has  lost  the  thread  of  his  discourse — staring 
wildly  at  the  ground — advancing  two  or  three  steps 


APOLLONIUS   OF    TYANA.  2gi 

and  crying  out,  '  Strike  the  tyrant !  strike  him  ! '  not 
as  if  he  saw  in  a  glass  darkly,  but  as  if  he  saw 
the  very  actions  themselves.  And  all  Ephesus  was 
amazed,  for  all  Ephesus  was  present  at  his  lecture. 
Then  he  paused,  as  men  pause  who  are  waiting  to 
see  what  will  be  the  issue  of  a  doubtful  undertaking ; 
and  then — '  Be  of  good  courage,  my  friends/  said 
he,  'the  tyrant  has  been  slain  this  day.  Why 
should  I  say  this  day?  This  moment — this  mo 
ment,  at  the  very  instant  that  I  stopped  speaking.' 
The  Ephesians  thought  him  cracked,  and  while  they 
wished  his  announcement  to  be  true,  they  were 
afraid  of  the  risk  of  listening  to  it  if  it  were  false.  '  I 
do  not  wonder  ',  said  Apollonius,  '  that  you  do  not 
believe  what  all  Rome  does  not  know  yet.  But  see  ! 
They  know  it !  They  are  running  all  over  the 
town  !  Ten  thousand  believe  it !  Twice  ten  thous 
and  are  leaping  for  joy  !  Twice  as  many  !  Four 
times  as  many !  Everybody  !  And  this  news  shall 
reach  us  too.  You  may  postpone  your  thanksgiving 
for  this  until  the  message  comes.  But  /  am  going 
to  adore  the  gods  for  what  I  saw.' 

Nerva,  the  successor  of  Domitian,  invited  Apol 
lonius  to  come  to  Rome  and  aid  him  with  his  coun 
sels,  but  Apollonius  merely  replied,  .'  We  shall 
soon  be  with  one  another  for  a  long,  long  time ; 
during  which  we  shall  neither  rule  others  nor  be 
ruled  ourselves.'  On  second  thoughts,  however,  he 
determined  at  least  to  send  Nerva  a  letter  of  advice 
by  Damis,  thus  fulfilling  his  duty  to  one  friend  and 
banishing  another  from  his  side,  for  he  felt  that  his 
end  was  nigh,  and  he  wished  that  end  to  be  hidden. 
Damis  did  not  suspect  his  object.  *  Damis ',  said 


APOLLONIUS   OF   TYANA. 


Apollonius  at  parting,  '  when  you  undertake  to 
philosophize  by  yourself,  keep  your  eyes  on  me.' 
But  this  was  the  last  time  that  Damis  ever  was  to 
lay  eyes  on  Apollonius,  and  the  guileless  Ninevite 
disappears  from  our  view.  With  these  words  the 
narrative  of  Damis  ends. 

The  reader  is  doubtless,  ere  this  time,  thoroughly 
exasperated  by  the  toughness  of  Apollonius.  Born 
in  the  reign  of  Augustus,  he  was  famous  under 
Nero,  and  now,  under  Nerva,  he  was  somewhere 
between  eighty  and  a  hundred  years  of  age.  He 
had  outlived  all  his  male  attendants  except  Damis, 
and  was  nursed  in  his  last  illness  by  two  female 
servants.  According  to  this  account,  he  gave  up 
the  ghost  prosaically.  According  to  another,  he 
disappeared  in  the  temple  of  Minerva,  at  Lindus. 
According  to  yet  another,  he  vanished  in  a  temple 
of  Diana  on  the  island  of  Crete,  and  a  voice,  as 
of  singing  virgins,  was  heard  saying,  '  Rise  from 
earth,  rise  to  heaven,  rise  !  '  But  this  was  not  the 
end  of  him.  In  his  judgment,  the  immortality  of 
the  soul  could  not  be  better  proved  than  by  an 
a  fortiori  argument  drawn  from  the  immortality  of 
the  tongue;  and  so,  after  his  death,  he  appeared  in 
a  vision  to  a  young  man  who  was  an  obstinate  un 
believer,  and  convinced  him  by  half-a-dozen  bad 
verses.  '  No  man  knoweth  his  sepulchre  to  this 
day,'  says  Philostratus,  '  but  he  has  a  temple  at 
Tyana,  for  the  emperors  have  thought  him  not 
unworthy  of  the  honors  of  which  they  themselves 
were  deemed  worthy.' 

As  was  said  in  the  beginning,  we  must  leave  to  our 
readers  themselves  the  detailed  comparison  of  this 


APOLLONIUS   OF    TYANA.  293 

heathen  Christ  with  the  Christ  of  the  Gospel.  And 
yet,  what  has  this  affectation  to  do  with  that  sim 
plicity  ;  the  man  who  is  sent  to  seek  the  righteous, 
with  Him  who  came  to  seek  sinners ;  the  man  who 
prays  to  God,  '  Pay  me  that  thou  owest,'  with  Him 
who  teaches  us  to  pray,  '  Forgive  us  our  debts '; 
the  man  who  says  that  neither  he  nor  God  can  wash 
away  the  pollution  of  murder,  with  the  Son  of  Man 
who  has  power  on  earth  to  forgive  sins  ?  Yet,  far 
apart  as  the  two  characters  are,  the  comparison 
may  be  profitable  to  those  who  have  a  weakness  for 
the  mythical  theory.  Let  them  evaporate  both 
'  myths  '  and  see  how  it  is  with  the  residuum.  But 
for  our  part  we  have  only  room  to  consider  as 
briefly  as  may  be  the  question  :  Was  this  Life  of 
Apollonius  intended  to  be  an  offset  to  the  history 
of  our  Saviour  ?  It  has  been  so  used.  Was  it  so 
intended  ?  The  learned  are  pretty  evenly  divided 
on  this  point,  so  that  the  unlearned  may  venture  on 
either  side  of  the  balance.  In  our  judgment,  a 
deliberate  biographical  antagonism  to  Christianity 
on  the  part  of  Philostratus  is  more  than  doubtful. 
The  most  that  can  be  maintained  with  plausibility  is 
a  designed  parallelism ;  but  even  that  is  open  to 
grave  objections.  Remarkable  is  the  lack  of  any 
allusion  to  Christ  or  the  Christian  religion ;  which 
silence  is  attributed  by  some  to  the  absence,  by 
others  to  the  cunning  concealment,  of  hostile 
motives.  But,  however  it  may  be  explained,  it  is 
impossible  to  explain  it  away,  and  on  any  theory 
falls  very  heavily  into  the  count  against  the  as 
sumption  of  a  direct  imitation  of  the  Gospel  nar 
rative.  Let  us  briefly  run  over  the  points  which 


294  APOLLONIUS   OF   TYANA. 

are  supposed  to  prove  that  Apollonius  is  a  pagan 
copy  of  Christ. 

The  life  of  Apollonius,  like  the  life  of  Christ,  has 
three  periods  :  that  of  preparation,  ministry,  suffer 
ing  ;  and  is  three  times  as  long,  and  the  periods  are 
in  far  different  proportions.  His  birth,  like  that  of 
Christ,  was  accompanied  with  signs  and  wonders ; 
and  so  was  the  birth  of  a  thousand  other  worthies. 
In  his  youth,  Apollonius  loved  to  linger  in  the 
temples ;  Christ  in  His  boyhood  remained  once  in 
the  temple  at  Jerusalem :  and  whereas  Apollonius 
commenced  his  career  as  a  temperance  lecturer,  the 
first  miracle  of  Christ  is  a  stumbling-block  to  tem 
perance  lecturers  even  unto  this  day.  Apollonius, 
like  Christ,  has  power  over  devils,  who  expostulate 
but  obey.  Apollonius  rouses  from  the  sleep  of 
death  the  maiden  of  Rome ;  as  Christ  awakes  the 
young  man  of  Nain — as  ^Esculapius  called  the  dead 
to  life.  He  goes  to  Rome  in  the  face  of  death,  as 
Christ  goes  to  Jerusalem.  Euphrates  was  a  former 
friend  of  Apollonius,  Judas  a  disciple  of  Christ's, 
and  both  were  lovers  of  money.  Two  of  the  counts 
of  the  accusations  were  the  same.  Both  were 
accused  of  setting  themselves  up  to  be  gods  and 
stirring  up  sedition ;  only  Christ  was  the  King  of 
the  Jews  and  Apollonius  merely  the  friend  of 
Nerva.  Both  stood  firm  before  their  judges  ;  only 
Christ's  demeanor  was  sublime;  Apollonius,  as' 
Philostratus  himself  intimates,  was  almost  impu 
dent.  Both  were  shamefully  entreated ;  only  the 
circumstantial  statements  are  entirely  unlike.  Apol 
lonius  spoke  to  the  companions  of  his  prison,  Christ 
to  the  thief  on  the  cross ;  but  the  one  preached  a 


APOLLONIUS   OF   TYANA.  295 

sermon  or  sermons,  the  other  uttered  an  edict  of 
power.  Christ  is  certain  of  His  resurrection  ;  Apol- 
lonius  of  the  issue  of  his  trial.  Christ  sends  His 
disciples  to  Galilee ;  Apollonius  sends  Damis  to 
Puteoli.  Both  appear  suddenly  to  their  friends, 
and  Demetrius  plays  the  part  of  the  unbelieving 
Thomas ;  the  unbelieving  youth,  the  part  of  the 
persecuting  Saul.  And,  finally,  to  wind  up  the  long 
list  of  more  or  less  frivolous  points  of  comparison, 
Christ  gave  His  name  to  the  Christians ;  Apollonius 
gave  his  to  the  Apollonians. 

Now,  without  denying  the  striking  character  of 
some  of  these  resemblances,  we  must  withhold  the 
conclusion  which  is  so  often  drawn.  Whoever 
seeks  resemblances  of  that  sort  can  find  them. 
Why  not  compare  Apollonius  and  Paul  ?  The  re 
semblances  are  striking,  nay,  the  coincidences  are 
absolutely  startling.  Paul  was  educated  at  Tarsus  ; 
so  was  Apollonius.  Paul  fought  with  wild  beasts 
at  Ephesus;  so  did  Apollonius.  Paul  preached  at 
Athens ;  so  did  Apollonius.  Paul  noticed  the 
altar  to  the  unknown  God ;  so  did  Apollonius. 
Paul's  bonds  were  loosed  in  prison  ;  so  was  it  with 
Apollonius.  Paul  appeared  before  Caesar's  judg 
ment-seat  ;  so  did  Apollonius.  Paul,  on  his  way  to 
Rome,  landed  at  Puteoli ;  so  did  Apollonius.  Paul 
was  suffered  to  dwell  by  himself;  Apollonius  was 
at  first  treated  with  similar  civility.  Paul  withstood 
Peter  ;  Apollonius  withstood  Euphrates.  Paul  had 
a  thorn  in  the  flesh  ;  Apollonius  had  Damis.  Paul 
woke  Eutychus,  who  had  fallen  asleep  ;  Apollonius 
woke  the  Roman  maiden.  There  are  various  tra 
ditions  of  Paul's  death,  and  no  one  knows  the  end 


296  APOLLONIUS   OF    TYANA. 

of  Apollonius.  Finally,  the  Corinthian  disciples  of 
Paul  assumed  his  name,  and  the  Greek  disciples  of 
Apollonius  took  upon  them  the  name  of  their 
master. 

'  But  this  is  sheer  trifling.  Read  the  Acts — read 
the  Epistles  of  Paul,  and  ask  yourself  if  there  is  any 
trace  of  real  likeness  between  that  soul  of  fire,  that 
mind  of  light,  that  least  yet  chiefest  of  the  Apostles, 
and  this  thing  of  mist  and  vapor,  with  its  sickly 
lightning  and  its  impotent  thunder,  a  cloud-man, 
not  a  god-man,  not  a  man  at  all.' 

We  grant  this  and  more  besides.  How,  then, 
shall  we  suppose  that  Philostratus  could  have  imi 
tated  the  loftier  exemplar  of  Christ  ?  To  have  had 
such  a  model  and  to  have  produced  such  a  copy  is 
a  heavier  charge  than  we  should  like  to  bring 
against  the  ingenious  author  of  such  a  romance.  It 
was  reserved  for  a  still  later  period  of  Hellenism 
and  a  modern  phase  of  infidelity  to  draw  a  parallel 
which  shows  how  utterly  outworn  was  the  one,  how 
utterly  heartless  is  the  other. 


LUCIAN 


LUCIAN.1 

One  of  Aristotle's  most  famous  scholars  put 
together  a  raft-like  book,  which  he  freighted  with 
all  manner  of  precious  wares,  with  a  cargo  far  more 
curious  and  costly  than  the  gold  and  silver,  ivory 
and  apes  and  peacocks,  that  the  navy  of  Tarshish 
brought  once  in  three  years  to  King  Solomon.  A 
few  planks,  a  few  scattered  bales,  have  reached  us, 
and  with  them  the  suggestive  name  of  the  lost 
vessel,  '  The  Life  of  Greece '.  For,  as  the  great 
master  had  arranged  in  a  vast  store-house  the 
polities  of  the  various  Greek  commonwealths,  so 
the  disciple  had  endeavored  to  send  down  to  after 
times  an  inventory  of  the  riches  of  private  life. 
Aristotle  and  Dicaearchus  were  alike  administrators 
of  a  dead  nationality.  What  Greece  was  to  effect 
thereafter,  it  was  to  effect,  not  as  a  political,  but  as 
an  intellectual  and  moral  power.  Such  nation 
ality  as  it  had,  held  together  just  long  enough  to 

Ji.  Luciani  Samosatensis  Opera.      Ex   recognitione    Caroli 
Jacobitz.     Lipsiae :   1852. 

2.  Ausgewahlte  Schriften  des  Lucian.     Erklart  von.  Julius 
Sommerbrodt.     Berlin  :   1853-1857. 

3.  Art.    'Lucian'.     Preller,    in   Pauly's    Realencyclopadie. 
Stuttgart :   1846. 

4.  Zur  Charakteristik  Lucians  und  seiner  Schriften  (Gesam- 
melte  Abhandlungen).  Von  K.  F.  Hermann.   Gottingen  :  1849. 

5.  Hellenismus  und  Christenthum.     Von  Dr.  H.  Kellner. 
Koln:  1866. 


3OO     .  L  UCIAN. 

explode  and  ferment  in  the  mass  of  barbaric  peo 
ples  ;  and  to  him  who  watches  narrowly  the  history 
of  the  world,  that  fermentation  is  not  over  yet.  But 
the  old  '  life  of  Greece ',  which  those  sages  of  the 
time  of  Alexander  strove  to  preserve  for  us,  was  so 
highly  organic  that  we  can  better  restore  it  in  out 
line  and  in  detail  than  that  other  life  under  Roman 
rule ;  and  as  few  historians  have  deemed  it  worth 
their  while  to  trace  the  Greek  coloring  of  modern 
thought,  so  no  one  has  succeeded  yet  in  isolating 
the  Greek  current  that  mingled  with  the  Oceanus 
of  the  Empire. 

Of  all  the  Greek  writers  of  the  Empire,  Lucian 
presents  the  most  fascinating  problems  to  the 
student  of  history.1  Not  Plutarch,  the  philosophic 
washerwoman  of  Chaeronea,  not  Antoninus,  the 
introspective  keeper  of  a  pathological  peepshow, 
gives  us  half  so  much  to  think  about,  gives  us  half 
so  many  glimpses  of  that  world  which  lived  such  a 
varied  life,  which  moved  under  the  impulse  of  such 
a  complex  of  forces.  But  the  very  suggestiveness 
of  Lucian,  the  very  multiplicity  of  the  figures  of  his 
canvas,  increases  the  difficulty  of  the  study.  How 

1  Ten  years  after  this  study  was  written — it  was  published 
in  the  Southern  Review  for  Oct.  1869 — I  spent  much  time  on 
Lucian,  and  those  who  worked  with  me  then  might  expect  a 
more  advanced  treatment  of  the  subject,  but  I  have  not  the 
courage  to  recast  a  paper  which  is  animated  by  a  more  sympa 
thetic  and  therefore  juster  spirit  than  would  be  possible  forme 
now.  Those  who  desire  to  know  more  about  Lucian  are 
referred  to  the  elaborate  and  attractive  work  of  Maurice 
Croiset,  Essai  sur  la  vie  et  les  oeuvres  de  Lucien,  Paris,  1882, 
in  which  will  be  found  confirmations  and  corrections  of  the 
views  presented  in  my  rapid  outline. — B.  L.  G. 


L  UCTAN.  3O I 

far  is  Lucian's  picture  of  his  times  a  portrait ;  how 
far  is  it  a  caricature  ?  Were  it  not  easier  to  find  the 
mirror  that  will  draw  into  a  clear  image  all  the 
blurs  and  blotches  that  we  find  elsewhere,  than  to 
determine  how  far  these  sharp  lines  of  his  have  been 
distorted  by  perversity,  how  much  these  brilliant 
colors  of  his  have  been  heightened  by  rhetorical 
art  ?  But  we  do  not  set  ourselves  so  hard,  we  had 
almost  said  so  impossible,  a  task.  Wider  reading, 
deeper  reflection,  may  hereafter  lead  us  to  more 
definite  results ;  but  as  those  results  would,  in  all 
likelihood,  be  the  outcome  of  other  men's  observa 
tion  and  other  men's  thoughts,  we  have  preferred  a 
more  independent  course — have  read  for  ourselves 
and  judged  for  ourselves.  It  is  true  that  Barrow 
and  Calamy  were  better  preachers  than  Sir  Roger 
de  Coverley's  chaplain  ;  yet  it  might  have  been  well 
for  Sir  Roger  to  have  deviated  once  in  a  while  from 
his  rule,  and  to  have  given  the  chaplain  a  chance  to 
air  his  native  crudities ;  and  so  it  may  be  well,  in 
this  case,  to  shut  up  Wieland  and  Jacob  for  a  while, 
and  trust  a  far  inferior  guide. 

If  people  had  any  gratitude  they  would  not  forget 
their  first  introduction  to  a  favorite  author  any 
more  than  their  first  introduction  to  the  future  wife 
or  husband.  Some  insignificant  tea-party,  some 
insectiferous  picnic,  often  becomes  invested  or  in 
fested  with  portentous  interest  when  connected 
with  a  love-affair,  while,  for  the  most  part,  men 
remember  their  first  reading  of  a  pet  writer  much 
less  vividly  than  their  first  assumption  of  a  tail-coat 
or  their  first  absorption  of  a  sherry-cobbler.  But, 
as  Goethe  has  said  somewhere,  ingratitude  is  a 


302  L  UCIAN. 

common  fault  in  high-strung  natures,  and  in 
claiming  to  be  an  exception  to  the  observation  just 
made,  we  are  confessing  the  baseness  of  the  slave 
that  pays  a  debt. 

Our  first  acquaintance  with  Lucian  dates  back  to 
an  obsolete  collection  called  the  '  Collectanea 
Graeca  Minora  '.  Now,  school-books  are  things  to 
be  hated  in  after  years  by  every  well  regulated 
mind  ;  and  every  author  of  a  school-book  is  blessed 
just  in  proportion  as  he  is  cursed.  Nor  do  we  hesi 
tate  to  say  that  we  still  cherish  a  mortal  grudge 
against  the  little  boy  that  roasted  cockles,  in  the 
first  fable  of  the  Collectanea — still  detest  Palsephatus 
and  his  attempts  to  plane  away  the  salient  figures 
of  Greek  mythology,  and  still  yawn  at  Hierocles 
and  the  scholastici,  him  who  carried  a  brick  with 
him  as  a  specimen  of  his  house,  and  him  who 
lashed  himself  to  the  anchor  in  a  storm.  But  from 
this  sweeping  censure  we  must  except  the  dialogues 
in  the  '  Collectanea ',  which  first  made  Lucian  known 
to  us,  and  gave  us  the  first  relish  for  an  author,  so 
often  mentioned  and  so  little  read  by  the  great  mass 
of  literary  people.  Of  course  your  true  scholar 
reads  Lucian ;  for,  besides  the  insight  which  Lu 
cian  gives  into  the  strange  life  of  the  second  cen 
tury,  no  author  is  so  important  as  an  expositor  of 
the  secrets  of  Hellenic  diction.  The  Syrian  bar 
barian  learned  his  Greek ;  and  as  he  did  not  learn 
it,  parrot-like,  by  rote,  but  thought  and  analysed 
before  he  combined,  he  who  has  eyes  to  see  can 
gather  many  a  lesson  from  the  stone-cutter's  appren 
tice.  Even  his  deviations  from  Attic  usage  show 
that  if  he  has  erred  he  has  erred  on  principle,  and 


L  UCIAN.  303 

he  never  drops  the  clue  of  Greek  thought.  But 
while  Lucian  is  especially  interesting  to  the  Greek 
scholar,  there  are  but  few  of  his  pieces  which  are 
interesting  only  to  the  Greek  scholar,  such  as  the 
*  Lexiphanes  ',  the  '  Solecist ',  and  the  '  Great  Suit  of 
Sigma  against  Tau  '.  Apart  from  these,  there  are 
not  many  ancient  authors  that  retain  for  modern 
times  so  much  of  their  essential  oil ;  and  Lucian's, 
we  hope,  will  not  be  altogether  evaporated  in  our 
transfusions. 

Philostratus,  the  author  of  that  strange  romance, 
Apollonius  of  Tyana,  passed  Lucian  by  in  his 
'  Lives  of  Eminent  Professors ' ;  why,  we  cannot 
tell ;  perhaps  because  he  was  greater  than  all  their 
tribe.  Slighted  by  his  contemporaries,  Lucian  was 
treated  still  worse  by  posterity ;  for  the  later  Chris 
tian  centuries  had  no  love  nor  mercy  for  a  man 
whom  they  counted  to  be  a  contemner  of  their 
creed.  So  Suidas,  the  old  dictionary-maker,  calls 
him  a  blasphemer  and  a  broken-down  lawyer,  sneers 
at  the  infinite  number  of  his  writings,  rejoices  in  the 
report  that  he  went  to  the  dogs  at  last  by  dying  of 
hydrophobia,  and  winds  up  his  notice  with  the  com 
forting  reflection  that  this  arch-enemy  of  Christi 
anity  will  be  an  heir  of  everlasting  burnings,  with 
Satan  to  bear  him  company.  In  these  circum 
stances  of  neglect  and  hatred,  our  safest  guide  to 
the  history  of  Lucian  must  be  Lucian  himself;  and 
some  of  his  pieces  give  us  glimpses  of  his  life  and 
his  training,  which  are  of  no  little  importance  for 
the  proper  appreciation  of  his  restless  and  varied 
activity.  Of  these  pieces, '  The  Dream '  is  generally 
put  at  the  beginning  of  Lucian's  collected  works, 


304  LUCIAN. 

and  has  often  been  published  separately  as  a  school- 
book.  It  tells  us  that  a  family  council  was  held 
over  the  lad  just  as  he  was  emerging  from  boyhood. 
His  father  was  poor,  a  higher  education  was  ex 
pensive,  and  his  uncle  was  ready  to  take  him  as  an 
apprentice  to  the  statuary's  craft ;  and  though  it 
was  not  a  gentlemanly  profession,  even  in  its 
highest  branches,  Lucian  was  not  disinclined  to  the 
trade,  and  his  imagination  was  busy  with  the  little 
figures  which  he  was  going  to  make  for  his  friends. 
And  the  boy  had  a  genius  for  it,  they  said.  Why, 
he  used  to  make  very  nice  cows  and  horses  and 
men  out  of  the  wax  which  he  scraped  off  his  tab 
lets  ;  and  thus  the  naughty  trick  for  which  his 
teacher  had  thrashed  him  appeared  at  this  crisis  as 
the  prophecy  of  future  distinction.  And  although 
the  distinction  did  not  come  in  the  expected  direc 
tion,  still  it  was  not  in  vain  that  the  boy  moulded 
little  figures  in  wax,  for  the  arts  are  all  interactive, 
and  as  Pheidias  copied  his  Zeus  from  Homer,  so  the 
later  poets  copied  their  Zeus  from  Pheidias.  It  is 
not  necessary  that  the  writer  be  a  virtuoso  in 
painting  or  in  sculpture ;  and  Goethe  is  a  notable 
warning  against  misdirected  energies.  But  who 
shall  say  that  Goethe's  power  of  representation  was 
not  increased  and  his  perception  of  situation  inten 
sified  by  his  assiduous  practice  in  drawing;  and 
who  can  study  Lucian's  characters  and  Lucian's 
groups  without  recognizing  the  trained  eye  of  the 
connoisseur,  if  not  the  skilful  hand  of  the  sculptor? 
But  a  sculptor  Lucian  was  not  to  be.  His  first 
morning's  experience  disenchanted  him.  He  broke 
a  marble  slab  which  he  was  set  to  chisel,  and,  as 


L  UCIAN.  305 

the  Greeks  would  say,  his  uncle  rubbed  it  into  him 
soundly.  That  night  he  cried  himself  to  sleep,  and 
in  a  vision  he  saw  Sculpture  and  Scholarship  con 
tending  for  him.  Of  course  Scholarship  overcame  ; 
and  at  the  close  of  the  piece,  Lucian  congratulates 
himself  on  his  choice,  as  he  reflects  how  he  left 
Samosata  a  poor  boy  ;  how  he  returned,  to  say  the 
least,  with  no  less  reputation  than  any  of  the  tribe 
of  sculptors. 

And  thus  the  little  Syrian  boy  of  Samosata,  on 
the  far-off  Euphrates,  began  a  career  as  brilliant  and 
as  unsatisfactory  as  any  in  the  annals  of  those  times. 
His  '  Dream '  was  written  in  the  first  flush  of  his 
return  to  his  native  country.  When  that  flush  dies 
away,  we  shall  have  to  listen  to  another  story ;  and 
the  rhetorician  will  revile  rhetoric  as  sharply  as  the 
sculptor's  apprentice  denounced  sculpture.  Mean 
while  we  will  review  with  him  his  course  of  life  as 
a  lawyer  and  as  a  lecturer  in  the  masterly  dialogue 
entitled  '  The  Double  Indictment'.  Zeus  opens  this 
piece,  which  is  one  of  Lucian's  best,  with  a  long 
complaint  about  the  hard  life  the  Immortals  lead ; 
and  he,  above  all,  as  stage-manager  and  property- 
man  of  the  Olympic  Theatre.  Especially  does  he 
grumble  at  the  vast  number  of  suits  which  have 
accumulated  in  heaven's  chancery ;  for,  what  with 
raining  and  hailing,  thundering  and  lightening, 
watching  the  martial  bustle  in  Babylon,  and  dining 
with  the  '  blameless  Ethiopians ',  he  has  not  time 
to  sleep,  or  to  give  himself  up  to  the  enjoyment  of 
nectar  and  ambrosia ;  much  less  to  hear  the  thou- 
sand-and-one  quarrels  of  men.  But  Hermes  tells 
him  that  the  plaintiffs  are  importunate  and  must  be 


306  LUC  I  AN. 

despatched  ;  and  Zeus  resigns  himself  to  the  dis 
charge  of  his  wearisome  judicial  functions — by  proxy. 
Justice  is  sent  to  Athens  to  decide  a  number  of 
cases,  the  last  of  which  on  the  docket  is  that  of  a  cer 
tain  Syrian,  in  whom  we  recognize  Lucian  himself. 
The  first  accuser  is  Rhetoric.  '  I  picked  up  this 
fellow ',  she  says,  '  a  mere  lad,  a  barbarian  in  lan 
guage  and  a  barbarian  in  dress,  when  he  was 
knocking  about  Ionia  and  did  not  know  what  to  do 
with  himself.  I  took  him  and  made  a  man  of  him. 
I  had  other  loves  enough,  rich  and  handsome  and 
high-born.  I  left  them  all  and  married  this  poor, 
young  obscurity.  I  brought  him  a  fine  dowry,  and 
gave  him  the  freedom  of  the  republic  of  letters.  I 
went  with  him  wherever  he  wished  to  parade  his 
lucky  match — to  Greece,  to  Ionia,  to  Italy,  to  Gaul. 
For  a  long  time  he  was  faithful,  and  never  slept  a 
night  away  from  me;  but  when  he  got  rich  and 
prosperous,  he  took  up  with  one  Dialogue,  reputed 
son  of  Madam  Philosophy,  and  now  he  stays  with 
him  altogether.  He  has  chopped  up  his  fine,  flow 
ing  sentences  into  short,  comic  questions.  Instead 
of  thundering  applause,  he  prefers  the  nods  and 
grins  and  the  "  hear,  hear "  of  *his  auditors ;  and 
instead  of  being  touched  by  my  fidelity,  he  has  no 
eyes  for  any  one  except  his  old  billy-goat  of  a  friend, 
whom,  by  the  way,  he  is  said  to  treat  very  badly. 
In  view  of  all  this,  I  charge  this  Syrian  husband  of 
mine  with  desertion  and  maltreatment;  and  if  he 
dare  answer,  let  him  answer,  if  he  can,  not  with  the 
art  which  I  taught  him,  but  according  to  the  precepts 
of  his  beloved  Dialogue.'  In  his  reply,  Lucian 
acknowledges  all  the  past  kindness  of  Rhetoric  to 


L  UCIAN. 


him,  but  denies  her  fidelity.  Instead  of  adhering 
to  her  native  simplicity  and  wearing  the  graceful, 
modest  garb  of  the  time  of  Demosthenes,  she  must 
needs  play  the  fine  lady,  dress  her  hair  after  the 
fashion  of  the  lorettes  of  the  day,  rub  paint  into  her 
face,  and  blacken  her  lower  eyelids.  Lovers  began 
to  multiply.  The  street  was  full  of  drunken  suitors, 
and  Madam,  highly  delighted  with  her  popularity, 
would  peep  at  them  from  the  roof,  or  slip  out 
to  them  through  the  door.  However,  with  a  due 
sense  of  her  early  love,  he  would  not  put  her  away 
openly,  and  was  content  to  withdraw  to  the  house 
of  a  quiet  friend  of  his,  one  Dialogue.  *  The  fact 
is  ',  said  he,  '  I  am  forty  years  old  and  more.  I  am 
tired  of  the  noise  of  the  real  courts  and  the  trouble 
of  cajoling  real  juries.  I  am  weary  of  tirades 
against  fictitious  tyrants  and  laudations  of  supposed 
heroes,  and  I  want  to  spend  the  rest  of  my  days  in 
cosey  chat  with  friend  Dialogue  in  the  groves  of 
Academe  or  in  the  walks  of  the  Lyceum.'  Ac 
quitted  of  this  charge  by  an  almost  unanimous 
vote,  Lucian  finds  himself  confronted  with  a  new 
and  unexpected  accuser.  That  very  Dialogue, 
whom  he  had  praised  so  highly,  turned  against 
him.  Dialogue  complains  that  Lucian  had  dragged 
him  down  from  the  lofty  regions  of  the  sky,  in 
which  he  was  wont  to  disport  himself,  and  had 
forced  him  to  act  a  comic  part  ;  had  changed  him 
from  a  soaring  eagle  to  a  funny  dog,  and  with  a 
peculiar  malice  had  left  just  enough  of  the  original 
form  to  make  people  stare  at  the  droll  hybrid.  To 
this,  Lucian  replies  that  all  these  changes  have 
been  so  many  improvements;  that  he  had  made 


308  L  UCIAN. 

Dialogue  walk  on  earth  like  other  reasonable  folk, 
washed  his  dirty  face,  taught  him  to  laugh,  given 
him  some  popularity,  suggested  common-sense 
subjects  for  discussion,  and,  barbarian  as  he  was, 
had  not  robbed  him  of  the  robe  of  Hellenic  diction. 
From  this  it  appears  that  up  to  his  fortieth  year 
Lucian  had  devoted  himself  partly  to  the  practice  of 
law,  partly  to  the  display  of  his  brilliant  talents  as 
a  rhetorician  and  a  lecturer.  He  had  returned  to 
his  old  home,  prompted  by  a  pardonable  desire 
to  dazzle  the  eyes  of  his  fellow-citizens  with  his 
wealth  and  fame ;  and  now  we  find  him  at  enmity 
with  his  old  profession  and  glorying  in  a  new 
career.  Let  us  see  whether  we  can  fill  up  this  gap. 
And  first,  we  find  among  his  papers  his  '  Farewell 
to  Rhetoric ',  under  the  title  '  Complete  Rheto 
rician  ',  a  masterpiece  of  irony.  Now  irony  is  but 
too  apt  to  overreach  itself;  and  no  figure  of  rhetoric, 
when  unsuccessful,  is  so  utterly  unsuccessful.  Plain 
people  cannot  appreciate  in  the  depression  of  the 
intaglio  the  relief  of  the  cameo,  and  we  have  often 
seen  the  most  absurd  embarrassments  arise  from 
the  injudicious  employment  of  this  Socratic  mode 
of  illustration.  The  consolation  one  derives  from 
the  stupidity  of  the  antagonist  is  cold  comfort  for 
the  failure.  Lucian's  fun  it  may  be  possible  to  mis 
take  at  times,  and  grave  editors  shake  their  heads  at 
sheer  nonsense,  which  is  simply  meant  to  be  sheer 
nonsense ;  but  his  irony  is  clear  and  cutting,  and 
the  '  Complete  Rhetorician '  is  perfect  in  its  kind. 
In  this  tract  he  contrasts  the  laborious  painstaking 
way  in  which  he  himself  acquired  the  art,  with  the 
'  Rhetoric  in  One  Day '  which  so  many  pretenders 


L  UCIAN.  309 

professed  to  teach  ;  and  although  we  have  lost  some 
of  the  points,  which  were  evidently  directed  against 
some  particular  enemy,  the  piece  is  barbed  from 
beginning  to  end.  And  here  we  may  mention  in 
passing  a  tract  of  similar  tendency  which  probably 
belongs  to  the  same  period ;  and  as  we  have  called 
the  '  Complete  Rhetorician  '  a  masterpiece  of  irony, 
so  we  see  in  the  '  Familiar  Letter  to  an  Uneducated 
Bibliomaniac  '  a  most  brilliant  specimen  of  direct 
invective ;  and  we  recommend  the  study  of  both  to 
those  who  can  recognize  the  common  features  of 
this  age  and  the  age  of  the  Antonines. 

If  the  '  Complete  Rhetorician '  is  a  Farewell  to 
Rhetoric,  the  '  Nigrinus '  is  a  Greeting  to  Philo 
sophy,  and  marks  a  turning-point  in  Lucian's 
career.  In  this  dialogue  he  represents  himself  as 
having  gone  from  Athens — where  he  had  resided 
after  his  return  from  Samosata — to  Rome,  in  order 
to  consult  an  oculist.  While  there  he  availed 
himself  of  the  opportunity  to  visit  Nigrinus,  who 
opened  the  eye  of  his  understanding,  and  caused 
the  parti-colored  life  of  Rome  to  pass  before  him  in 
review — a  striking  contrast  to  the  simplicity  of 
Athenian  life — as  he  saw  its  pomp  and  its  mean 
ness,  its  luxury  and  its  depravity.  The  author 
gives  us  no  reason  to  complain  of  any  lack  of  acute 
observation,  of  vivid  coloring  ;  but  he  is  not  yet 
master  of  the  dialogue  form.  The  continued  oratio 
obliqua  becomes  fatiguing;  and,  if  read  after  the 
other  pieces  of  this  period,  the  '  Nigrinus  '  produces 
the  effect  of  a  table  of  contents  to  the  richer  em 
broidery  of  the  same  themes.  Hence  it  is,  perhaps, 
that  Immanuel  Bekker,  with  his  fine  critical  sense, 


3IO  LUC  I  AN. 

has  pronounced  the  piece  spurious;  a  judgment 
which  we  can  understand,  but  which  we  cannot 
accept.  One  thing  in  this  dialogue  deserves  special 
notice  for  its  psychological  truth.  Lucian  speaks  of 
his  almost  ecstatic  emotion  at  the  revelation  of  Ni- 
grinus  ;  and  no  religious  enthusiast  could  have  had 
more  copious  sweats,  more  faltering  a  tongue, 
more  abundant  tears.  Then  follow,  in  due  succes 
sion,  rapturous  joy,  spiritual  elevation,  tranquil 
happiness.  The  negative  intoxicates  as  well  as  the 
positive  ;  and  many  a  man  has  felt  as  blissful  when 
he  was  annihilating  '  shams  '  and  exploding  '  wind 
bags  ',  as  if  he  had  risen  to  a  new  life  and  were 
revelling  in  a  new  creation. 

We  have  noticed  Lucian's '  Farewell  to  Rhetoric'. 
We  have  now  to  attend  the  closing-out  sale  of  his 
philosophic  studies  in  the  'Auction  of  Philoso 
phers  '.  It  was  at  best  a  slender  stock,  for  Lucian's 
nature  was  pre-eminently  artistic;  and  he  had 
already  appropriated  all  that  he  could  work  up — the 
critical  attitude  of  the  New  Academy,  the  elegant 
scholarship  of  the  Stoa,  the  grin  of  the  Cynic,  the 
fine  observations  of  the  Peripatetics,  and  the  easy 
going  temperament  of  the  Epicureans.  What  re 
mained  over  was,  in  his  eyes,  mere  refuse.  In  this 
'Auction  of  Philosophers',  Zeus  is  represented  as 
selling  off  the  head  men  of  the  various  sects — all  of 
them  set  in  a  row  and  nicely  furbished  up.  Terms, 
liberal.  Twelve  months'  credit,  with  good  security. 
Most  of  the  fun  lies  near  enough — Pythagoras  and 
his  beans,  Aristippus  and  his  bottle,  Chrysippus 
and  his  puzzles,  Socrates  and  his  ideas,  whose 
absolute  existence  is  conditioned  by  relative  non- 


L  UCIAN.  3 1 1 

existence.  But  what  is  this  the  auctioneer  says  of 
Aristotle — '  If  you  buy  him,  you  will  find  out  how 
long  the  gnat  lives,  to  what  depth  the  sea  is  lighted 
by  the  sun,  and  what  sort  of  a  soul  oysters  have '  ? 
So  runs  the  world  away.  Too  great  a  man  for 
ancient  or  for  modern  times  and  standing  astride  of 
both,  the  pigmies  of  either  side  say  that  Aristotle 
has  but  one  leg,  because  they  can  see  but  one. 
What  music  to  the  ear  of  Grote,  the  great  vindi 
cator  of  the  Sophists,  to  hear  such  a  man  called  by 
that  once  opprobrious  name.1 

Close  upon  the  heels  of  the  Auction  followed 
the  '  Fisherman,  or  The  Resurrection ',  which  is 
also  of  some  importance  for  the  understanding  of 
Lucian's  history.  The  philosophers,  indignant  at 
having  been  sold,  get  permission  to  come  to  life 
again  and  assail  the  sacrilegious  mocker.  The 
trial  takes  place  on  the  Acropolis  at  Athens.  Philo 
sophy  herself  is  the  presiding  justice.  Diogenes 
is  the  accuser.  Lucian  defends  himself,  and  proves 
in  the  most  satisfactory  manner  that  his  ridicule 
had  been  aimed,  not  at  the  great  philosophers  of 
the  olden  time,  but  at  their  degenerate  representa 
tives.  Acquitted  by  a  unanimous  verdict  of  the 
plaintiffs  themselves,  Lucian  is  declared  their  friend 
and  benefactor,  and  is  appointed  Inspector-General 
of  Philosophers.  The  title,  '  Fisherman  ',  is  taken 
from  the  fishing  scene  which  closes  the  dialogue. 
Lucian  borrows  a  fishing-line  from  the  priestess  of 
Athena,  and,  baiting  the  hook  with  gold  and  figs, 
draws  up  one  after  another  of  the  philosophic 
lazzaroni,  and  submits  these  queer  fish  to  the 

1  Dialog.  Mort.,  xii.  3. 


312  LUC  I  AN. 

examination  of  the  great  thinkers  to  whose  sects 
they  claim  to  belong.  This  piece,  which  must 
remind  the  English  reader  of  Praed's  famous  poem, 
is  one  of  Lucian's  happiest  in  every  sense — happiest 
in  its  artistic  finish,  happiest  in  its  tone.  He  has 
renounced  Philosophy,  but  he  is  not  yet  embittered 
against  her.  Although  he  has  lost  all  faith  in  the 
results  of  thinking,  he  respects  the  thinker,  and  he 
is  not  very  gouty  yet.  He  can  still  be  merry  over 
any  criticism,  unless  it  attack  his  language;  and 
when  a  reviewer  calls  him  a  literary  Prometheus,  he 
gives  an  honorable  explanation  of  the  title,  and 
claims  creative  power  for  his  art ;  although,  as  he 
says  himself,  less  flattering  interpretations  suggest 
themselves  at  once,  and,  like  Prometheus,  he  may 
have  offered  an  unacceptable  sacrifice — the  mocking 
bones  of  comedy  under  the  fat  of  philosophy ;  but 
in  any  case,  unlike  Prometheus,  he  was  no  thief. 
The  poor  thing  was  his  own. 

In  his  '  Account  of  the  Death  of  Peregrinus ', 
which  must  have  been  written  after  A.  D.  165, 
Lucian's  tone  is  perceptibly  more  bitter ;  but  the 
'  Hermotimus '  is  evidently  intended  to  sum  up  his 
creed  of  unbelief  and  to  justify  it.  The 'Hermotimus' 
is  one  of  the  most  Voltairian  of  Lucian's  works  ; 
and  indeed,  Lucian  has  been  called  the  Voltaire  of 
the  second  century.  The  ready  wit,  the  sparkling 
style,  and  the  negative  polemic  of  both  famous 
authors  suggest  a  comparison  ;  and  yet  the  resem 
blance  vanishes  as  we  look  more  closely  at  the  two. 
We  miss  in  Voltaire  that  fertility  of  fancy  that 
fills  the  writings  of  Lucian  with  the  most  varied 
figures.  With  all  their  excellences,  Candide,  Zadig, 


LUC  I  AN.  313 

Micromegas,  L'Homme  aux  quarante  Ecus,  are 
not  Lucianic,  and  we  are  of  those  who  think  that  it  is 
far  more  just  to  compare  Lucian  with  Rabelais  than 
with  Voltaire.  The  pictures  which  Rabelais  draws 
of  the  sixteenth  century  are  gigantesque,  but  they 
are  Lucianic  in  their  outline ;  only,  instead  of  the 
subtle,  life-like  painting  which  we  admire  in  Lucian, 
it  is  a  vast  and  grotesque  shadow  that  we  see  cast 
on  the  ample  canvas  of  the  joyous  cure  of  Meudon. 
And  then  again  the  world  is  beginning  to  find  out 
that  there  was  far  more  of  the  positive  in  Voltaire 
than  was  popularly  supposed,1  and  Lucian's  skepti 
cism  became  at  last  a  universal  solvent,  and  a  uni 
versal  solvent  it  is  in  the  '  Hermotimus '.  In  this 
dialogue  Lucian's  skepticism  reaches  its  acme,  and 
the  blankness  of  his  own  nihilism  seems  to  have 
affected  the  spirits  of  the  great  wit.  Step  by  step 
he  leads  Hermotimus — who  has  been  studying  from 
forty  to  sixty  and  has  not  yet  attained — until  he 
brings  him  to  the  conviction  that  no  proper  choice 
of  a  philosophic  sect  can  be  made  without  going 
through  all  the  systems  critically,  that  no  human 
life  would  be  long  enough  for  such  a  journey  of 
inspection,  and  that  after  all  it  is  but  too  likely  that 
no  existing  sect  has  hit  upon  the  right  way.  Nay, 
even  if  the  seeker  should  attain  the  goal,  the  enjoy 
ment  of  perfect  virtue  for  the  brief  remnant  of  life 
were  hardly  worth  the  long  and  unremitting  toil, 
unless,  perhaps,  there  be  another  life  beyond  the 
present — a  chance  which  Lucian  sneers  at.  What 

1  Sous  les  mines  de  1'edifice  qu'il  renverse  on  apercoit  les 
contours  de  celui  qu'il  veut  batir.  G.  Boissier,  Revue  des  deux 
Mondes,  ier  Janvier,  1879. — B.  L.  G. 


314  LUC  I  AN. 

philosophers  call  virtue  is  a  mere  abstraction. 
Real  virtue  lies  in  virtuous  action ;  and  those  wise 
acres  let  the  fruit  of  the  tree  of  knowledge  go  while 
they  dispute  about  the  bark  and  pelt  one  another 
with  the  leaves.  They  are  fighting  the  air,  quarrel 
ling  about  the  ass's  shadow,  and  pounding  water 
with  a  pestle.  Even  the  mathematicians,  who  deem 
themselves  so  secure  within  their  magic  circle,  do 
not  escape  this  skeptic.  He  laughs  to  scorn  their 
line  without  breadth  and  their  point  without  thick 
ness,  although  he  uses  mathematics  himself  to  show 
that  correct  deductions  from  false  principles  are  as 
false  as  the  principles  themselves.  '  If  you  say 
twice  five  is  seven,  it  follows,  as  the  night  the  day, 
that  four  times  five  is  fourteen.' 

It  is  to  this  period  of  partial  and  total  skepticism 
that  most  of  Lucian's  works  belong.  Of  his  earlier 
writings  we  have  still  some  of  his  sophistic  plead 
ings,  his  show-pieces.  One  of  these  speeches  is 
called  '  The  Disowned '.  A  young  man  who  had 
been  disowned  and  disinherited  studied  medicine, 
and  when  his  father  went  mad  healed  him,  and  in 
return  for  this  service  was  restored  to  membership 
in  the  family.  But  his  step-mother  next  went  mad, 
and  when  he  refused  to  heal  her  he  was  again 
thrust  out,  and  Lucian  pleads  his  imaginary  case. 
Another  speech  is  entitled  '  The  Tyrannicide ',  in 
which  a  man  who  slew  the  tyrant's  son,  and  thus 
occasioned  the  suicide  of  the  tyrant  himself,  claims 
the  reward  for  liberating  the  people.  For  us  mod 
erns  such  themes  as  these,  which  men  like  Libanius 
labored  over  with  painful  art,  have  no  more  taste  in 
them  than  the  white  of  an  egg ;  and  it  is  painful  to 


L  UCIAN.  3 1 5 

see  Lucian  returning  in  his  old  age  to  these 
beggarly  elements.  It  is  painful  to  see  him  begin 
a  wandering  life  again — a  melancholy  spectacle, 
whether  it  was  the  thirst  for  fame  or  the  need  of 
money  that  drove  the  tottering  actor  on  the  stage 
once  more.  Again  he  recites  and  declaims ;  again 
the  poor  old  jester  makes  faces  before  a  public  to 
whom  he  is  nothing  but  an  antiquity.  The  old  wit 
flashes  out  every  now  and  then,  but  his  theatrical 
lightning  is  well-nigh  exhausted.  The  two  pieces  in 
verse,  the  'Tragedy  of  the  Gout '  and  '  Nimble-foot ', 
if  they  are  really  his,  show  that  he  retained  his  ver 
satility  ;  and  even  when  he  was  standing  '  one  foot 
in  Charon's  boat ',  in  expectancy  of  the  summons 
over  which  he  had  made  merry  so  often,  he  had 
strength  enough  to  rap  his  antagonists  over  the 
knuckles  with  Charon's  paddle.  His  last  days 
were  spent  in  Egypt,  in  the  enjoyment  of  a  lucrative 
judicial  position  ;  but  in  his  heart  of  hearts  he  felt 
himself  a  slave.  The  man  who  laughed  at  led 
philosophers  became  a  led  philosopher  himself. 
Lucian  died  under  Commodus — precisely  when,  we 
do  not  know ;  in  any  case  at  an  advanced  age,  as 
his  birth  is  set  down  in  A.  D.  120,  under  the  reign 
of  Hadrian.  Nor  do  we  know  the  manner  of  his 
death,  for  the  dogs  which  Suidas  sets  on  him  are 
purely  mythical  hounds  of  the  Cynic  breed.i 

Before  turning  from  the  painter  to  his  paintings, 
from  the  author  to  his  writings,  we  must  again 
remind  the  reader  that  the  satiric  element  by  no 
means  exhausts  the  significance  of  Lucian.  It  was 
at  first  an  honest  indignation  that  made  him  a 

1  Comp.  de  Morte  Peregr.  37,  Nigrin.  38. 


316  LUC  I  AN. 

satirist — an  honest  contempt  of  the  shams  and 
unrealities  and  hypocrisies  of  the  world.  But  he 
was  an  artist  before  he  was  a  satirist,  and  he  often 
forgets  his  satire  over  his  art.  In  his  picture  of  life 
and  manners,  the  coloring  and  the  attitude  are  often 
more  to  him  than  the  moral ;  some  of  his  pieces  are 
almost  wholly  descriptive,  some  of  them  purely  fan 
tastic.  Like  his  great  model  Aristophanes,  he  often 
writes  with  a  purpose,  but  that  purpose  is  fused  into 
his  work ;  and  like  his  great  model,  he  often  writes 
without  any  purpose  save  the  joyous  exercise  of 
genius.  Any  estimate  of  Lucian  which  should 
leave  out  the  '  Imagines  ',  with  its  exquisite  plastic 
power  of  representation,  or  the  '  True  Story  ',  with  its 
frolic  grace,  would  give  but  a  one-sided  view  of 
him.  Of  course  the  limits  of  our  article  preclude 
the  possibility  of  analysing  all  the  works  of  Lucian — 
some  eighty-two  in  number,  genuine  and  spurious ; 
but  we  shall  endeavor  to  present  at  least  some  of  his 
principal  phases ;  and  as  we  have  mentioned  the 
'  True  Story',  it  may  be  as  well  to  begin  with  that. 
Let  us  first  premise  that  the  '  True  Story — a  Vera 
cious  Narrative  in  Two  Parts ',  is  a  comic  sequel  to 
a  brilliant  essay  entitled  'How  to  write  History'. 
After  a  long  peace  the  Romans  had  a  real  war,  and 
the  four  years'  struggle  with  Vologesus,  which 
ended  so  brilliantly  for  the  Roman  arms  in  A.  D. 
165,  called  out  a  numberless  horde  of  scribblers. 
The  servile  adulation,  the  utter  disregard  for  truth, 
the  want  of  true  culture,  of  correct  views  of  histor 
ical  composition,  so  glaringly  manifest  in  most  of 
these  would-be  historians,  provoked  from  Lucian 
this  essay,  which,  in  spite  of  its  title,  does  not 


LUCIAN.  317 

pretend  to  be  an  exhaustive  treatment  of  the  theme. 
Indeed  an  exhaustive  treatment  of  so  comprehen 
sive  a  subject  could  hardly  be  expected  from  a 
writer  of  Lucian's  impatient  nature,  and  the  first 
section  of  the  essay,  '  on  the  faults  that  are  to  be 
avoided ',  is  wrought  out  with  much  more  spirit 
than  the  second,  which  sets  forth  '  the  excellences 
that  are  to  be  sought  after'.  But  what  grace  is 
suffused  through  the  whole!  How  he  lights  up 
his  didactic  discourse  by  apposite  illustration,  now 
drawn  from  the  stage-struck  Abderites,  now  from 
Diogenes  trundling  his  jar — which  moderns  call  his 
tub — at  the  siege  of  Corinth  !  What  scorn  he  heaps 
on  those  who  turn  history  into  a  panegyric  and 
depreciate  conquest  by  depreciating  the  conquered  ! 
How  playfully  he  reminds  corporals  and  surgeons 
that  their  note-books  are  not  annals !  How  he 
lashes  the  servile  imitators — those  who  copy  the 
phrases  of  Thucydides  or  the  diction  of  Herodotus, 
and  think  that  they  are  equal  to  Xenophon  because 
they  parody  the  opening  of  the  Anabasis !  How 
he  ridicules  the  minute  narration  of  details  and 
the  hasty  dismissal  of  important  events,  the  dis 
torted  geography,  the  incongruous  language,  half 
poetry,  half  slang,  and  above  all  how  he  abhors  the 
sacrifice  of  historic  truth  to  dramatic  effect !  How 
noble  is  the  closing  advice  :  '  Write  not  merely  for 
present  praise  and  present  honor,  but  write  for  all 
time  to  come,  and  seek  your  reward  from  posterity, 
that  it  may  be  said  of  you  :  Be  it  with  others  as  it 
may,  he  was  a  free  man  and  outspoken  ;  no  flattery 
nor  servility  in  him ;  but  in  all  circumstances  the 
truth  itself.'  Now  the  composition  of  this  little 


3 1 8  L  UCIAN. 

treatise  falls  about  the  time  when  Lucian  was 
engaged  in  earnest  study ;  and  as  the  '  True  Story ' 
was  confessedly  undertaken  as  a  relaxation  from 
hard  work,  we  think  that  the  common  arrangement, 
which  puts  it  after  the  essay  on  history,  is  suffic 
iently  justified.  In  the  '  True  Story '  Lucian  has 
anticipated  Rabelais,  Gulliver,  and  Munchausen, 
and  so  rapidly  do  the  slides  of  his  magic  lantern 
follow  one  upon  the  other  that  we  seem  now  to  be 
gazing  at  the  Oriental  world  of  the  Thousand-and- 
One  Nights,  and  now  peering  into  the  mistier  re 
cesses  of  German  legend.  To  enjoy  the  show  prop 
erly,  it  is  far  better  for  the  reader  to  give  himself  up 
to  this  play  of  Lucian's  fancy  than  to  endeavor  to 
unriddle  whatever  satire  of  contemporary  literature 
may  lie  concealed  in  its  allegory — just  as  Rabelais 
is  most  enjoyable  when  his  sense  is  so  complicated 
with  his  nonsense  as  to  defy  the  effort  to  draw 
either  out  entire.  There  may  be  profound  meaning 
in  the  war  which  breaks  out  between  the  Sunburgers 
under  Phaethon,  and  the  Moonburgers  under  En- 
dymion,  which  begins  with  the  attempt  of  the  Moon- 
burgers  to  found  a  colony  on  the  desert  planet  of 
Lucifer,  and  which  ends  with  the  victory  of  the  Sun- 
burgers,  Lucifer  being  declared  common  property 
and  the  vanquished  compelled  to  pay  an  annual 
tribute  of  ten  thousand  amphoreis  of  dew.  But  so 
elastic  are  all  such  allegories  that  they  can  be 
stretched  to  fit  anything,  and  the  war  of  these 
Heliotes  and  Selenites  would  answer  to  describe  the 
conflict  between  orthodoxy  and  rationalism,  and 
Lucifer  would  stand  for  the  coming  man.  But  how 
much  better  to  look  with  childlike  interest  on  the 


LUC  I  AN.  319 

marshalling  of  Horsevultures  and  Chickpeashooters 
and  Garlickfighters  and  Flea-archers  and  Wind- 
runners,  and  to  watch  the  huge  spiders  spin  their 
web  from  the  moon  to  Lucifer  !  Nor  do  we  trouble 
ourselves  about  the  occult  meaning  of  his  Lych- 
nopolis  or  Lamptown,  which  may  have  suggested 
to  Rabelais  his  Pays  de  Lanternois  and  his  Lych- 
nobiens.  It  is  a  graceful  conception,  this  town  of 
lamps  and  lanterns  of  all  sorts  and  sizes  and  condi 
tions,  hardby  the  Cloudcuckootown  or  Nephelococ- 
cygia  of  Aristophanes,  '  a  wise  and  truthful  man ', 
says  our  author,  '  whom  people  disbelieve  on  idle 
grounds.'  After  thus  traversing  uncritically  the 
wonders  of  the  air,  we  allow  ourselves  to  be  trans 
ported  unquestioning  to  the  chambers  of  the  deep, 
and  with  the  heroes  of  the  story — Lucian  and  his 
men — we  get  ourselves  swallowed  by  a  whale — a 
creature  1500  stades  in  length,  in  whose  inward 
parts  we  find  another  world.  It  is  a  somewhat 
circumscribed  world,  but  not  uncomfortable,  were 
it  not  for  the  warlike  tribes  that  inhabit  it,  the  Crab- 
hands  and  the  Tunnyheads  and  the  rest  of  them, 
who  must  first  be  exterminated.  By  degrees  we 
familiarize  ourselves  with  our  great  prison,  mark  the 
quarters  of  the  sky  by  head  and  tail,  right  gill,  left 
gill,  and  mark  the  time  by  the  hourly  opening  of 
the  monster's  mouth.  We  live  there  comfortably 
a  year  and  eight  months.  But  a  jail  is  a  jail,  and 
we  try  to  cut  through  the  walls.  After  advancing 
five  stades  (a  stade  is  600  feet)  we  give  up  this  plan, 
and  resolve  to  kill  the  whale  by  setting  the  forests 
on  fire.  Seven  days  and  seven  nights  the  fire 
burns,  and  the  monster  takes  no  notice,  gives  no 


320  LUC  I  AN. 

sign.  The  eighth  day  and  the  ninth  he  becomes 
uneasy.  By  the  twelfth  he  is  dying.  As  he  opens 
his  mouth  we  seize  our  chance  to  put  a  prop  be 
tween  his  jaws,  in  order  to  keep  them  from  closing 
on  us  forever.  Once  out  of  the  whale — why  should 
anybody  say  it  is  Jonah's  ? — our  ship's  crew  has  a 
pleasant  voyage,  until  a  cold  spell  comes  on  that 
freezes  the  water  to  the  depth  of  four  hundred 
fathoms.  In  no  wise  disconcerted  by  this,  we  dig  a 
cavern  in  the  ice  and  live  on  the  fish  embedded  in 
the  frozen  ocean.  When  these  provisions  are  ex 
hausted,  we  rig  up  the  ship  and  sail  along  the 
smooth  surface  until  the  ice  melts.  Passing  by  the 
Milk  Island,  sacred  to  Galatea  (which  is,  being  inter 
preted,  Milcah),  and  ruled  by  Tyro  (Chester) — an 
evident  thrust  at  etymologizing  historians — and  the 
Cork  Islands,  whose  denizens  have  feet  of  cork,  we 
reach  at  last  the  Islands  of  the  Blessed.  Much  of 
this  scene  is  familiar  from  other  sources,  for  the 
land  of  Cocagne  is  no  novelty  in  literature.  We' 
have  all  smelt  its  odors  and  heard  its  music  and 
breathed  its  fragrant  air.  We  all  know  its  golden 
capital  with  its  emerald  wall.  Yet  Lucian's  fancy 
and,  as  some  say,  Lucian's  reading  of  the  Christians' 
books,  have  suggested  new  particulars.  The  ground 
is  of  ivory,  the  temples  of  beryl,  the  altars  great 
amethysts.  The  bath-houses  are  of  glass,  the  baths 
are  heated  with  cinnamon  wood.  The  soul  is 
dressed  in  purple  spider-webs,  and  wears  a  shad 
owy  likeness  of  the  body.  There  is  no  night  there, 
neither  light  of  the  sun.  The  light  is  that  of  the 
morning  twilight ;  there  is  but  one  season,  spring ; 
one  wind,  the  zephyr.  The  grape-vines  bear  every 


LUC  I  AN.  321 

month,  bread  grows  already  baked,  and  there  are 
three  hundred  and  sixty-five  springs  of  water  about 
the  city,  and  as  many  of  honey.  In  fact  the  island 
is  as  convenient  as  Charles  Reade's  island  in  '  Foul 
Play '.  Glass  trees  furnish  cups,  nightingales  shower 
down  flowers,  clouds  rain  perfumery,  and  the  two 
fountains  of  Laughter  and  Delight  provide  for  the 
flow  of  soul.  And  now  the  satirist  peeps  out.  The 
Epicureans  and  the  followers  of  Aristippus  are  in 
high  feather,  but  the  Academicians  are  still  in 
suspense,  and  the  Stoics  are  still  climbing  the  steep 
ascent  of  virtue.  Of  especial  interest  is  the  inter 
view  with  Homer,  who  declares  that  he  is  a  Baby 
lonian,  that  he  composed  all  his  spurious  verses 
himself,  that  his  critics  are  a  pack  of  jolterheads 
and  simpletons,  and  that  he  began  the  Iliad  with 
the  wrath  of  Achilles,  because  that  was  the  first 
thing  that  came  into  his  head.  We  are  amused  to 
see  that  the  owlish  gravity  of  some  commentators 
can  make  nothing  of  this  admirable  fooling.  The 
short  stay  of  our  party  is  richly  diversified  by  a 
series  of  games,  a  pitched  battle  with  the  damned, 
and  the  elopement  of  Helen ;  and  ^  we  are  fain  to 
linger,  but  Rhadamanthys  is  inexorable,  and  we 
are  obliged  to  content  ourselves  with  sailing  direc 
tions  and  the  good  wishes  of  our  hosts.  As  Helen 
remained  faithful  to  her  infidelity,  so  Ulysses  is  true 
to  his  adventurous  nature,  and  as  Lucian  goes  on 
board,  the  much-enduring  hero  gives  him  a  letter 
to  Calypso — all  unknown  to  Penelope,  who  had 
doubtless  bestowed  on  her  husband  a  new  claim  to 
his  title.  The  Hell  Islands,  by  which  the  mariners 
pass,  are  of  the  most  orthodox  type.  The  smell  is 


322  LUC  I  AN. 

of  bitumen  and  sulphur  and  pitch,  and  a  steam  rises 
as  of  roasting  sinners.  The  air  is  dark  and  misty, 
and  the  dew  is  pitch.  Cliffs  on  every  side  ;  no  tree, 
no  water,  anywhere  on  these  Islands  of  the  Ac 
cursed.  The  pavement  of  the  prison  had  broken  out 
into  swords  and  stakes.  Two  streams  run  round 
the  enclosure,  one  of  liquid  mud  and  one  of  gore ; 
and  through  the  middle  of  it  flows  a  river  of  fire. 
Guides  go  about  with  the  visitors,  and  name  the 
culprits  and  the  crimes.  Of  these,  the  most  severely 
punished  are  the  liars,  among  whom  figure  Ctesias 
and  Herodotus.  '  As  I  saw  them  ',  says  Lucian, '  I 
had  good  hope  for  the  next  world.  /  never  told  a 
lie.'  Our  party  next  land  on  the  Island  of  Dreams, 
which  is  tricked  out  with  poppy  and  mandragora, 
with  bats,  with  gates  of  horn  and  of  ivory,  and  all 
the  other  theatrical  properties  of  sleep.  At  Ogygia, 
the  abode  of  Calypso,  we  get  a  peep  into  Ulysses* 
letter,  in  which  he  tells  his  sweetheart,  what  we  had 
long  suspected,  that  he  is  very  sorry  for  having  left 
her,  and  only  awaits  an  opportunity  to  rejoin  her. 
Calypso  '  ne  pouvait  se  consoler ',  as  we  all  know, 
and  after  she  has  wiped  her  tears,  questions  the 
travellers  straitly  about  Ulysses,  and  most  straitly 
about  his  wife,  whether  indeed  she  was  as  chaste 
and  fair  as  he  had  boasted ;  whereunto  our  unscru 
pulous  travellers  answer  as  they  think  would  best 
please  their  hostess.  But  we  have  written  enough 
to  show  that  the  '  True  Story '  is  a  narrative  well 
worthy  of  Dore's  pencil,  and  we  will  spare  the 
reader  the  account  of  the  naval  combat  between  the 
Big  Pumpkins  and  the  Hardshells,  the  marvellous 
story  of  the  Halcyon,  which  is  first  cousin  to  the 


LUC i AN;  323 

Eastern  Roc,  the  fights  with  the  Oxheads,  and  the 
final  adventure  with  those  she-assassins,  the  She- 
ass-shins.1 

The '  Lie-fancier '  (Philopseudes)  has  a  deeper  and  a 
clearer  meaning  than  the  '  True  Story '.  If  it  means 
anything,  it  means  that  philosophy  does  not  save 
from  superstition,  and  that  men  who  play  with  lies 
end  by  believing  in  them.  In  the  introduction  to 
the  '  Lie-fancier ',  ample  allowance  is  made  for  those 
falsehoods  that  have  some  useful  end  in  view,  and 
for  those  inventions  that  lend  variety  to  poetry,  or 
a  lustre  to  the  origin  of  princely  houses  or  ancient 
cities.  But  what  are  we  to  say  of  the  lie-fancier 
pure  and  simple,  who  breeds  lies  as  one  breeds 
pigeons,  and  rejoices  in  every  fresh  monstrosity  of 
pouter  and  tumbler  ?  To  exemplify  this  mania,  we 
are  presented  to  a  group  of  philosophers,  with 
Eucrates  as  their  centre,  a  gouty  old  reprobate,  who 
concealed  a  monkey  nature  under  a  flowing  beard 
and  a  venerable  mien.  The  talk  is  all  of  marvellous 
cures,  of  witchcraft,  of  magic  rites.  A  sovereign 
remedy  for  the  gout  is  the  tooth  of  a  shrew-mouse, 
wrapped  in  the  fresh  skin  of  a  lion,  and  bound 
around  the  leg.  A  snake-bite  is  cured  by  incanta 
tion — formula  not  given ;  and  a  story  is  told  of  a 
Babylonian  enchanter,  who  not  only  healed  his 
patient,  but  brought  out  of  the  field  all  the  poisonous 
reptiles  found  within  its  borders.  One  old  serpent 
did  not  come  at  first,  but  the  magician  sent  a  young 
snake  after  him,  and  he  too  came  to  be  consumed, 
with  the  rest,  by  one  breath  of  the  potent  wizard. 
Another  of  the  company  had  seen  an  Hyperborean 


324  LUCIAN. 

fly  through  the  air,  walk  on  the  water,  and  pass 
through  the  fire ;  bring  up  the  dead,  bring  down  the 
moon,  and  bring  in  to  a  despairing  lover  a  distant 
sweetheart.  Among  the  great  magicians  is  a  Syrian 
professor  from  Palestine,  famous  for  casting  out 
devils ;  and  '  when  he  stands  over  the  patient,  as  he 
lies  on  the  ground,  and  asks  the  devil  whence  he 
came  into  the  subject,  the  patient  himself  says  never 
a  word,  but  the  devil  replies,  in  Greek  or  barbaric 
tongue,  as  the  case,  may  be,  and  then  the  magician 
brings  his  exorcisms  to  bear,  and  casts  out  the 
unclean  spirit.'  Of  .course  this  reminds  every  one  of 
the  Gospel  narrative,  but  there  is  not  the  slightest 
reason  to  suppose  that  there  is  any  allusion  to  that 
narrative.  Syria l  was  a  famous  land  for  sorcerers 
and  sorceresses,  and  this  magician  is  represented  as 
still  extant.  Next  comes  an  account  of  the  won 
derful  statue  of  Pelichus,  the  Corinthian  general, 
evidently  a  lineal  ancestor  of  the  Commander  in 
Don  Juan ;  and  then  we  have  a  Vision  of  Hecate 
and  the  lower  world,  a  dream  and  a  warning  of 
death.  At  this  point  the  sons  of  Eucrates  come  in, 
and  their  entrance  seems  to  remind  the  old  gentleman 
of  a  prodigious  lie :  *  So  help  me/  says  he,  '  as 
I  will  tell  you  the  truth.  You  all  know  how  I  loved 
the  sainted  mother  of  these  lads.  I  treated  her  well 
while  she  lived,  and  when  she  died  I  burned  on  her 
funeral  pyre  all  her  jewelry,  all  her  favorite  clothes. 
But  on  the  seventh  day,  as  I  was  consoling  myself 
by  reading  Plato  on  the  Immortality  of  the  Soul,  in 
came  Demaeneta.  I  put  my  arms  around  her  and 
began  to  weep.  But  she  would  not  let  me.  "  Why 

1  Dialog.  Meretr.,  iv.  4. 


LUC  I  AN.  325 

didn't  you  burn  both  of  my  gold  sandals  ? "  she 
asked.  "  I  couldn't  find  but  the  one,"  I  replied. 
"  The  other  was  lost."  "  I  know  that,"  she  said ; 
"  it  slipped  down  under  the  trunk."  Was  ever  any 
thing  more  exquisitely  feminine  ?  "  Why  didn't  you 
burn  it?"  "  It  was  lost."  "  Why  did  you  let  it  be 
lost,  then  ? "  Just  then  an  importunate  Maltese 
lap-dog  began  to  bark,  and  the  ghost  disappeared.' 
The  slipper  was  found  and  consumed,  and  the  weary 
Demaeneta  was  no  longer  recalled  to  earth  by  her 
golden  sandal,  which  had  doubtless  often  done 
matronly  service  on  the  persons  of  the  little  Eucra- 
teses.  Of  the  other  stories,  the  most  remarkable  is 
that  of  the  Egyptian  wizard,  from  whom  his  disciple 
caught  the  art  of  turning  a  broomstick  or  a  pestle 
into  a  man,  but,  unluckily,  did  not  learn  the  art  of 
unmanning  the  pestle  or  the  broomstick.  But  is 
not  this  the  subject  of  Goethe's  charming  poem, 
'  The  Magician's  Prentice '  (Der  Zauberlehrling),  and 
may  we  not  read  in  his  wonderful  rhythm  how  the 
transformed  broomstick  persists  in  bringing  water 
after  the  bath  is  full,  how  the  disciple  in  despair 
cuts  the  broomstick  in  two,  and  how  the  master 
surprises  the  pupil  watching  from  the  depth  of  his 
watery  wretchedness  the  hydraulic  antics  of  the  two 
imps  he  has  made  out  of  one  ? 

This  coquetry  of  philosophy  with  magic  is  all  the 
more  remarkable,  because  it  is  the  preliminary  of 
an  important  wedlock,  the  fusion  of  the  Greek  with 
the  Oriental,  the  rise  of  that  Neo-Platonic  school, 
which  may  be  called  the  Great  Pagan  Revival,  with 
Plotinus,  Porphyry,  and  lamblichus  for  its  preachers, 
and  Julian  for  its  secular  champion.  To  the  same 


326  LUCTAN. 

phase  as  the  '  Lie-fancier '  belongs,  in  part,  the 
romance  entitled  '  Lucius,  or  the  Enchanted  Ass', 
which  is  always  printed  with  Lucian's  works ;  but 
as  its  authorship  is  disputed,  and  its  relation  to  the 
'  Metamorphoses  '  of  Apuleius  is  a  matter  of  much 
debate,  we  reserve  the  whole  subject  for  further 
study,  and  pass  over  to  the  next  section  of  our 
present  theme. 

Among  the  figures  of  the  crowded  procession 
in  '  the  Nigrinus  ',  no  little  prominence  is  given  to 
the  hireling  philosopher ; l  and  the  miseries  of  the 
learned  Greeks,  who  were  employed  about  the  per 
sons  of  wealthy  Romans,  form  the  subject  of  one  of 
Lucian's  most  elaborate  treatises,  which  we  have 
selected  as  a  specimen-picture  out  of  his  long  gal 
lery.  Graeculus  esuriens — we  all  know  the  rest.  It 
is  a  lucky  thing  that  we  can  see  and  hear  the  other 
side,  and  learn  to  temper  with  pity  our  contempt 
for  the  hungry  Greekling.  And  Lucian  might  well 
claim  to  speak  for  the  Greeks.  There  is  scarcely 
anything  Syrian  about  him,  except  his  birthplace.2 
Nay,  he  forgets  so  entirely  that  he  is  a  Syrian  that 
he  actually  sneers  at  somebody's  Syrian  brogue. 
How  thoroughly  Greek  he  is  appears  very  strik 
ingly  in  the  '  Anacharsis ',  in  which  he  defends,  under 
the  person  of  Solon,  the  Greek  view  of  gymnastics 

1  T&V  67ri  p.icrBw  (j)i\o(ro<povi>T<t>v. — Nigr.  25. 

2  Yet  of  all  the  barbarians,  the  Syrians  had  the  closest  affinity 
to  the  Greeks,  from  whom  they  differed,  however,  in  unctuous- 
ness  ;  and,  while  Lucian  was  an  excellent  copy  of  a  Greek,  the 
transformation  on  which  he  prided  himself  was,  as  M.  Croiset 
says,  perhaps  not  so  profound  as  he  himself  supposed.     '  Le 
Syrien  est  naturellement  ardent  et  leger,  et  Lucien  a  ete  Syrien 
a  cet  egard  jusqu'a.  son  dernier  jour.' — B.  L.  G. 


LUC  I  AN.  327 

against  the  attacks  of  the  Scythian  philosopher. 
But  it  is  in  the  tract '  De  mercede  conductis '  that  his 
sensitiveness  for  Greek  honor,  for  the  honor  of 
the  people  as  well  as  for  the  honor  of  the  literary 
class,  manifests  itself  in  a  way  to  do  infinite  credit  to 
Lucian's  heart.  Luckily,  the  sketch  has  lost  the 
pungency  which  it  must  have  had  for  the  family 
tutors  and  the  Grub  Street  writers  of  the  last  cen 
tury  ;  but  even  now  that  those  two  calamities  of 
authors,  '  the  patron  and  the  jail ',  are  alike  over 
past,  the  truthfulness  of  some  of  the  features  of  the 
picture  may  still  be  verified  by  every-day  experi 
ence.  Bad  as  domestic  service  is  for  any  one — 
says  Lucian,  addressing  a  friend,  who  thinks  of 
making  an  engagement — bad  as  domestic  service  is 
for  any  one,  it  is  especially  bad  for  the  man  of 
gentle  birth  and  philosophical  training.  Lower 
professions  may  well  serve  as  vessels  of  dishonor, 
but  these  are  of  finer  clay,  and  are  shivered  under 
the  weight  of  brutal  insolence.  And,  after  all  the 
humiliation,  the  darling  object  is  not  gained  by  this 
voluntary  servitude ;  the  dreaded  poverty  is  not 
avoided ;  and  after  years  and  years  of  endurance, 
the  wretched  self-deceiver  finds  himself  a  poor  and 
needy  hireling  still.  Nor  is  the  life  of  one  of  these 
led  philosophers  the  life  of  luxury  which  the  novice 
dreams  of,  when  his  eyes  are  dazzled  by  the  gold 
and  silver  of  those  princely  houses,  and  his  appe 
tite  is  whetted  by  their  rich  viands  and  their  costly 
wines.  Ah  me!  thinks  Lucian,  the  Lotus-eaters 
in  Homer  have  more  excuse,  for  they  forgot  the 
noble  over  the  sweet,  the  decorum  over  the  dulce  ;  but 
imagine  the  stupendous  folly  of  a  fellow  that  stands 


328  LUC  I  AN. 

starving  away  in  utter  forgetfulness  for  the  pleasure 
of  seeing  another  stuffing  himself  with  lotus,  him 
self  without  the  hope  of  even  a  little  taste.  Count 
over  your  tenter-hooks.  First  comes  the  misery 
of  making  the  acquaintance  of  the  great  man,  the 
early  levers,  the  pushing  and  shoving  at  the  street- 
door,  the  insolence  of  the  porter,  and  the  surliness 
of  the  Libyan  usher  (nomenclator),  who  has  to  be 
paid  for  remembering  your  name,  the  expense  in 
dress  out  of  all  proportion  to  your  means,  the 
observance  of  your  future  patron's  taste  in  colors, 
so  as  to  avoid  disagreeable  contrasts — and  all  this 
that  you  may  form  part  of  his  '  tail ',  that  he  does 
not  even  deign  to  look  at  for  many  days  together. 
And  when  at  last  he  asks  you  a  question,  you  break 
out  into  a  profuse  sweat,  your  head  swims,  you  are 
shaking  and  quaking  at  the  wrong  time.  And 
when  you  ought  to  say  who  was  the  greatest  gen 
eral  of  Queen  Anne's  day,  you  answer,  she  was 
the  daughter  of  King  James.1  After  long  waiting, 
weary  days  and  sleepless  nights,  you  are  presented 
and  examined.  Old  fellow  though  you  be,  with  a 
long  beard  and  grey  pate,  you  are  put  through 
your  paces  for  the  amusement  of  the  patron.  Then 
there  is  diligent  inquiry  made  into  your  previous 
life;  and  if  you  pass  this  severe  ordeal  successfully, 
and  his  lordship  likes  your  style,  and  the  lady  of 
the  house  be  willing,  and  the  head-servants  have  no 
objection,  then  you  are  taken  into  the  retinue  and 
invited  to  dinner.  Upon  the  reception  of  this 
honor  you  must  fee  the  servant  that  brings  the  invi 
tation — a  horribly  large  sum  for  an  Athenian,  five 

1  Tiff  r\v  6  jSao"iXfVff  TO)V  'A^aiwy,  on  ^tXtai  vrjfs  %(rav  avroty. 


LUC  I  AN.  329 

drachmae  at  least — and  you  must  get  yourself  up 
elaborately,  fearing  all  the  while  that  you  will  get 
there  either  too  early  or  too  late,  the  one  inelegant, 
the  other  vulgar.  Everybody  is  watching  you,  the 
servants,  the  guests,  the  master.  '  Lord ! '  says  one, 
'  he  never  dined  anywhere  in  his  life.  A  napkin  is 
a  novelty  to  him,  and  he  drinks  out  of  his  finger- 
bowl/  The  host  gives  the  attendants  instruction  to 
see  whether  you  look  round  too  often  at  the  lady 
of  the  house,  and  then,  to  put  your  breeding  to  the 
test,  he  drinks  your  health.  In  your  embarrass 
ment  you  do  not  know  what  to  answer,  and  all  the 
other  dependents,  angry  at  this  preference,  unite  in 
reviling  you.  '  Eleventh-hour  favorite !  Rome  is 
not  open  to  anybody  but  Greeks.  Did  you  ever 
see  such  an  eater  ?  or  such  a  drinker  ?  He  never 
had  his  fill  of  white  bread  before,  much  less  of 
pheasant !  I  should  think  not.  He  has  left  us 
nothing  but  the  bones.  Ah  well !  he  is  a  new  shoe. 
Wait  till  he  is  run  down  and  twisted  out  of  shape 
by  the  mud.  He,  too,  will  be  a  castaway  under 
the  sofa,  a  prey  to  bugs  and  all  manner  of  vermin.' 
However,  you  are  the  cock  of  the  walk  just  now, 
and  may  console  yourself.1  But  you  lose  your  bal 
ance.  You  drink  too  much  and  get  into  a  bad  way. 
It  is  not  elegant  to  rise  nor  safe  to  remain,  and  you 
wait  and  wait — no  eyes,  no  ears,  for  all  the  fine 
display  the  host  is  making.  You  wait  and  wrait, 
praying  for  an  earthquake,  praying  for  a  fire.  We 
pass  by  the  dreadful  night  and  that  awful  state  of 
indigestion  for  which  the  English  language  has  no 

(frOopos* — Pindar,  Pyth.  i.  85. 


33O  LUC  I  AN. 

word,  which  only  the  Persian  bidamagbuden^  can 
fitly  express.  Next  day  is  scarcely  better,  for  next 
day  you  must  have  the  dreaded  discussion  of  terms. 
Two  or  three  friends  are  called  in.  '  Take  a  seat. 
You  know  how  simply  we  live.  We  wish  you  to 
consider  this  house  your  home.  But  something 
definite  must  be  determined  on.  You  do  not  come 
to  us  to  make  money.  "  Good  treatment  is  of  more 
importance  to  you  than  pecuniary  compensation." 
Just  so.  Fix  your  own  price ;  but  while  you  are 
fixing  it,  it  may  be  as  well  for  you  to  remember  the 
perquisites  of  your  position,  the  holiday  presents 
and  the  like,  and  I  am  sure  you  will  be  moderate. 
Cultivated  people  are  above  filthy  lucre  and,  I  am 
confident,  we  shall  have  no  trouble.'  As  your 
patron  goes  on,  your  hopes  crumble,  your  talents 
shrink  to  oboli,  and  your  farm  sinks  into  a  quag 
mire.  You  half  perceive  the  fellow's  meanness,  and 
yet  you  cannot  but  cling  to  some  of  his  straw 
phrases. 

Suchlike  wetteth  the  lips,  but  never,  ah  !  never,  the  palate.2 

And  so  for  sheer  shame  you  leave  the  matter 
of  compensation  to  him.  He  in  turn  leaves  it  to  a 
friend,  a  hard-hearted  old  reprobate  and  a  flatterer 
in  grain.  '  Lucky  dog ! '  cries  he,  '  to  have  been 
received  into  the  intimacy  of  such  a  family.  Such 
an  honor  is  more  worth  than  all  the  talents  of 

1  Welch  ein  Zustand  !     Iferr,  so  spate 
Schleichst  du  heut  aus  deiner  Kammer  ; 
Perser  nennen's  Bidamagbuden 
Deutsche  sagen  Katzen jammer. 

Goethe,  W.  6.  Divan,  ix.  14. 
2  x«'Aea  p.ev  r  edirjv,  vTrepwyv  &'  OVK  edirjvev. — II.  xxii.  495. 


LUC  IAN.  331 

Croesus,  all  the  wealth  of  Midas.  And  to  think  that 
you  are  to  be  paid  into  the  bargain.  Well !  well ! 
If  you  are  not  an  out-and-out  spendthrift,  I  think 
that  such-and-such  an  amount  will  be  amply  suffi 
cient  ' — naming  a  sum  out  of  all  proportion  to  your 
soaring  hopes.  But  it  is  too  late ;  you  are  caught ; 
you  shut  your  eyes ;  the  bit  is  in  your  mouth  and 
you  give  yourself  up  to  the  new  control.  Every 
body  sees  that  you  are  in  the  magic  circle.  Every 
body  congratulates  you.  '  For  your  part ',  says 
Lucian,  as  many  a  newly-married  man  has  said  to 
himself,  '  you  can't  see  quite  yet  why  people  think 
you  so  happy,'  and  you  feel,  as  the  proverb  has  it, 
that  you  are  coming  out  of  the  little  end  of  the 
horn.1  Those  golden  hopes  prove  to  be  nothing  but 
gilded  bubbles  ;  the  hardships  are  real  and  grievous 
and  implacable  and  unremitting,  especially  if  you 
take  into  account  the  humiliation  and  the  servility. 
From  that  moment  you  cease  to  be  a  gentleman, 
and  leave  freedom,  family,  ancestry,  behind  you. 
Unused  to  servitude,  you  are  slow  to  learn  how  to 
obey,  and  the  ghost  of  your  lost  liberty  haunts  you 
and  makes  you  kick  out  of  the  traces  at  times.  And 
yet  a  slave  in  all  but  the  name,  you  hold  out  your 
hand  every  month,  like  other  household  drudges, 
and  receive  your  monthly  wages.  And  this  is  the 
fate  that  you  have  brought  on  yourself;  and  that  at 
a  period  of  life  when,  if  you  were  a  slave  by  birth, 
it  were  time  to  earn  your  freedom  !  You,  the  coun 
tryman  of  Plato,  of  Chrysippus,  of  Aristotle,  pitting 
yourself  against  flatterers  and  vulgarians  and  buf 
foons  ;  you,  the  only  Greek  in  a  crowd  of  Romans, 

1  eVi  MavSpoftovXov  X^P^  r<* 


332  LUC  I  AN. 

miserably  murdering  the  Emperor's  Latin ;  you,  a 
philosopher,  joining  in  noisy  banquets,  in  vulgar 
laudation,  immoderate  potation,  and  super-ridicu 
lous  saltation,  what  time  the  bell  arouses  you  from 
your  slumbers,  and  you  have  to  shake  off  the 
sweetest  corner  of  sleep's  blanket,  and  run  about 
with  that  delectable  society,  while  yesterday's  mud 
is  still  sticking  to  your  legs.  And  all  this  for  what? 
For  delicate  entremets  which  you  never  get,  and 
wine  of  exquisite  bouquet  which  you  never  taste  ! 
Nor  are  you  to  console  yourself  with  the  thought 
that  your  employment  is  a  high  one.  Your  patron 
cares  for  literature  as  much  as  the  ass  for  the  lyre, 
the  cat  for  the  riddle,  the  cow  for  nutmegs.  You 
have  got  a  long  beard,  you  have  a  reverend  face, 
you  wear  your  Grecian  mantle  becomingly,  you 
are  known  as  a  literary  gentleman,  as  a  public 
lecturer,  as  a  philosophic  writer,  and  he  keeps  you 
as  he  keeps  a  monkey.  You  must  trot  about  in  his 
suite  all  day,  you  must  stand  on  your  legs  without 
a  morsel  to  eat  or  a  mouthful  to  drink.  You  come 
to  dinner  after  time  and  ten  chances  to  one  you  are 
pushed  into  a  corner  for  a  new  arrival,  and  get  a 
bone  to  gnaw  or  are  fain  to  fill  your  belly  with  the 
garnishes  of  vanished  dishes.  No  eggs  for  you,  no 
fat  capon  to  line  your  inner  man  withal ;  at  most, 
half  of  a  starveling  chicken,  or  a  tough  old  pigeon  ; 
and  even  that  is  snatched  from  your  hungry  gaze 
if  a  stranger  comes  in,  and  the  foul  fiend  of  a 
waiter  whispers :  '  You  know  you  are  one  of  the 
family.'  The  other  guests  drink  the  old  wine  and 
you  some  wretched  stuff,  and  yet  you  are  ashamed 
to  show  how  little  prized  you  are  ;  and  so  you  swig 


LUCIAN.  333 

your  villanous  tipple  out  of  a  golden  cup — such  as 
it  is  and  what  there  is  of  it — for  even  that  is  scant. 
Comes  in  some  teller  of  improper  tales,  some  singer 
of  erotic  songs.  Good-bye  to  you,  philosophers. 
Go  and  bewail  your  fate.  But,  worst  of  all,  you 
must  needs  stay  and  praise  the  favorites  of  your 
mistress,  when  they  dance  or  strum  on  the  guitar. 
Poor  perspiring  frog,  you  have  to  croak  their 
praises  from  your  dry-land  perch,  whilst  your  own 
throat  is  parched  ;  and  then,  should  your  master  be 
the  jealous  lord  of  a  pretty  wife,  you  must  keep  a 
watch  over  your  eyes,  and  make  a  covenant  with 
them  that  they  look  not  on  maid  or  matron.  What 
sad  reflections  come  into  your  mind  as  you  wake 
at  cock-crow  and  review  your  fate,  as  you  look  up 
from  the  pit  into  which  you  have  plunged  yourself, 
and  see  the  clear  sky  above  you  and  hear  the 
whistling  of  the  liberal  breeze  !  '  Is  this  my  pay ', 
you  ask,  '  for  all  my  efforts  ?  '  And,  worst  of  all, 
these  efforts  are  abortive.  I  am  a  botcher  at  this 
trade.  I  am  no  boon  companion,  no  fun-maker.-  If 
I  stand  on  my  dignity,  I  am  a  nuisance.  If  I  stoop 
to  wreathe  my  face  into  smiles,  I  am,  so  to  speak, 
spit  upon.  I  am  a  comic  actor  in  a  tragic  mask — 
and  there's  the  bell  that  calls  me  to  the  stage.'  So 
you  go  on  from  day  to  day,  until  at  last  your  con 
stitution  is  undermined  and  you  gallop  yourself 
into  a  consumption,  sweat  yourself  into  a  pneu 
monia,  or  guzzle  yourself  into  gout.  When  you 
accompany  your  owners  into  the  country,  there  is 
never  any  room  for  you  in  the  family  carriage,  but 
you  are  stuffed  into  a  wagon  with  the  cook  or  the 
hairdresser.  And  thank  your  stars  if  you  do  not 


334  LUCIAN. 

fare  as  ill  as  did  Thesmopolis,  the  famous  Stoic. 
Madame  la  Duchesse  wanted  him  to  take  charge  of 
her  Maltese  pet.  '  Dear  little  Florine,  sweet  little 
Florine  ',  she  cried,  '  won't  you  take  care  of  my 
dear  little,  sweet  little  Florine  ?  The  servants  are 
so  negligent.  I  can't  trust  them.  There's  a  good 
old  lovey  of  a  Thesmopolis.  Bye,  bye,  Florine.' 
Sweet  little  Florine  sticks  her  muzzle  out  from 
under  the  flowing  beard  of  the  philosopher.  Dear 
little  Florine  licks  off  the  relics  of  yesterday's  soup 
from  his  moustache ;  and  dear  little,  sweet  little 
Florine,  that  loved  '  not  wisely  but  too  well ',  shows 
herself  as  lively  as  the  Hebrew  women,  and  when 
the  philosopher  reaches  the  villa,  he  finds  that  his 
robe  has  become  a  cradle  for  Florine's  pups. 

As  you  become  tamer,  the  demands  become 
higher,  and  your  talents  are  debased  to  buffoonery 
and  flattery.  And  even  if  the  claims  of  the  men 
were  endurable,  the  women  are  not  to  be  borne,  for 
some  of  them  have  the  mania  for  being  literary 
ladies,  she-philosophers,  poetesses  ;  and,  as  such, 
keep  a  number  of  literary  gentlemen,  he-philoso 
phers,  and  poets,  in  their  train.  But  as  their  time 
is  precious,  they  only  lend  their  ears  to  you  while 
they  lend  their  hair  to  the  curling-tongs,  and,  as  it 
were,  combine  Cosmos  with  cosmetics,  the  glacial 
theory  with  ices,  and  stop  a  discourse  on  '  Virtue  ' 
to  write  a  note  appointing  a  rendezvous. 

After  a  long  time  of  watching  and  waiting,  here 
comes  a  wretched  cloak  or  sleazy  shirt  as  a  present, 
and  every  member  of  the  household  makes  you  his 
compliment  and  insinuates  the  value  of  his  services. 
Your  wages  are  doled  out  a  few  pence  at  a  time, 


LUC i AN.  •    335 

and  to  get  that  you  must  fawn  upon  the  master  and 
be  attentive  to  the  steward ;  and  then  you  have 
nothing  to  put  up,  for  your  pay  is  all  overdue  to 
the  tailor,  the  doctor,  and  the  cobbler.  But  by  this 
time  your  master  has  stripped  you  of  flower  and 
fruit  and  foliage,  of  soul  and  mind  and  body.  He 
has  made  a  riddled  rag  of  you,  and  looks  for  some 
convenient  dunghill  to  cast  you  on.  Some  charge 
is  trumped  up,  and  you  are  hustled  out  head  fore 
most  at  dead  of  night,  your  guerdon  gout,  your 
benison  a  potent  paunch.  Your  faculties  are  gone, 
or,  at  all  events,  your  reputation  is  lost.  You  are 
a  Greek,  and  that  makes  against  you,  even  if  your 
enemy  were  to  hold  his  peace.  And  no  wonder, 
when  you  remember  how  many  rascals  of  your  race 
are  roaming  the  world,  masters  of  occult  sciences, 
soothsayers,  astrologers,  poisoners,  whose  pre 
tended  philosophy  and  mock  scholarship  bring  all 
the  Greeks  into  discredit.  But  the  truth  is  that 
these  Roman  grandees  hate  the  Greek  inmates  of 
their  houses  because  they  are  supposed  to  know 
the  secrets  of  their  lives,  to  know  how  they  are 
hiding  murder  and  incest  and  adultery  under  a  fair 
outside,  as  books  conceal  beneath  their  gilding  the 
story  of  a  Thyestes,  an  CEdipus,  a  Tereus. 

Behold  now  this  picture  of  the  life  you  are  about 
to  lead.  See  those  lofty  gilded  Propylaea.  They 
are  not  built  on  the  level  earth,  but  high  up  on  a 
hill.  The  approach  is  steep  and  slippery.  If  your 
foot  slides,  you  are  gone.  Within  sits  Plutus,  all 
made  of  gold.  There  stands  the  lover,  all  amaze 
ment  as  he  stares  at  the  brilliant  metal.  Fair- 
visaged  Hope  receives  him — herself  attired  in 


336  LUC  r AN-. 

dazzling  raiment — and  leads  him  onward,  onward. 
Next,  Fraud  and  Bondage  take  him,  and  pass  him 
on  to  Toil,  who  works  him  well,  and  hands  him 
over  to  Old  Age.  Hope  flies  away,  and  from  some 
obscure  back-door  the  poor  old  man  is  thrust  out, 
naked  and  paunchy  and  ghastly  pale,  with  his  left 
hand  for  raiment  and  his  right  hand  for  a  halter. 
Repentance  meets  him,  and  her  weeping  only 
hurries  him  on  to  ruin.  Behold  and  be  warned,  and 
whatever  you  do,  remember  the  saying  of  the  wise 
man  :  God  is  not  to  be  blamed ;  the  blame  lies  with 
the  chooser.1 

Another  picture,  of  surpassing  power  and  living 
energy,  is  the  '  Banquet,  or  the  Lapithse ';  or,  as  we 
might  translate  the  title  freely,  the  Kilkenny  Philo 
sophers.  In  this  piece  Lucian  spreads  a  feast,  to 
which  philosophers  of  the  various  sects  are  invited  ; 
and  as  the  banquet  advances,  these  sages  come  to 
loggerheads  with  one  another,  and  display  a  trucul- 
ence,  a  savagery,  a  superfluity  of  naughtiness  and 
filthiness,  sufficiently  indicated  by  the  title  Lapithse. 
Well  may  the  narrator  draw  the  conclusion  that 
there  is  no  earthly  use  in  scientific  and  philosophic 
attainments  if  the  life  is  not  harmonized  by  these 
higher  principles  to  a  nobler  standard ;  and  well 
may  the  student  of  history  pause  to  reflect  on  the 
failure  of  all  human  systems  to  transform  the  nature. 
But  Lucian's  picture  is  too  Teniers-like  in  its  details 
for  these  pages,  and  we  must  devote  the  rest  of  our 
space  to  some  remarks  on  the  Dialogues. 

Of  these,  by  far  the  best  known  are  the  '  Dialogues 

1  fobs  dvairios,  alrta  de  fXopevov. — Plato,  Republ.  x.  681  E. 


LUCIAN.  337 

of  the  Dead  '  and  the  '  Dialogues  of  the  Gods  ' — the 
former,  especially,  having  been  imitated  scores  of 
times,  and  both  having  been  introduced  into  the 
cycle  of  school-books.  The  Greek  scholar  of  the 
present  day  need  hardly  be  reminded  that  Lucian 
is  not  a  proper  author  for  schoolboys  to  learn 
Greek  from.  His  use  of  the  negatives  varies  so 
much  from  the  classic  standard  that  even  good 
Grecians  seem  puzzled  to  account  for  some  of  his 
deviations ;  and  the  teacher  must  give  the  boys 
vacation  from  many  important  distinctions,  if  he  is 
to  make  any  headway  at  all.  The  other  particles 
are  not  always  employed  in  conformity  with  Attic 
usage ;  the  optative  mood  has  too  wide  a  range,  and 
the  compounds  too  often  make  us  feel  the  composi 
tion  ;  the  parts  do  not  grow  together  as  in  the 
native  period  of  the  language.  But  apart  from 
these  objections,  which  apply  more  or  less  to  all 
Lucian's  works,  these  two  sets  of  dialogues  hardly 
give  a  fair  idea  of  Lucian's  genius.  '  Charon  on 
his  Travels',  'Timon',  *  Chanticleer',  are  all  better 
specimens.  The  canvas  is  larger,  the  characteriza 
tion  finer,  the  fancy  more  elastic,  the  moral  more 
profound.  '  Chanticleer ',  especially,  is  one  of  our 
favorites.  For  elegance  of  style,  for  vivacity  of 
dialogue,  for  dramatic  effectiveness,  it  is  Lucian's 
masterpiece.  It  is  true  that  the  springs  of  its 
movement  have  been  borrowed  for  modern  works, 
and  we  recognize  at  once  our  old  friends  the 
Scholar  of  Alcala  and  the  Devil  on  Two  Sticks ; 
but  such  is  Lucian's  freshness,  so  lively  and  vigorous 
is  the  Greekdom  of  the  piece,  that  we  can  hardly 
realize  that  we  are  reading  a  twice-told  tale — when 


338  LUC i AN. 

Micyllus  the  cobbler  is  conducted  by  Chanticleer, 
as  Don  Cleofas  by  Asmodeus,  behind  the  scenes  of 
life.  '  Charon ',  also,  has  peculiar  merits.  What 
happier  conception  than  to  bring  the  old  fellow  out 
for  a  holiday  to  the  upper  regions,  and  how  well  our 
author  depicts  the  grim  old  waterman  as  he  begs 
Hermes  to  act  as  his  guide,  philosopher,  and  friend ; 
and  how  delicately  the  line  is  drawn  between  the 
unconscious  humor  of  the  infernal  ferryman  and 
the  more  subtle  playfulness  of  the  Guide  of  Souls  ! 
This  dramatic  individuality  of  Lucian's  characters 
is  worthy  of  especial  study.  Diogenes  and  Men- 
ippus  are  both  cynics,  but  Diogenes  makes  you  feel 
that  he  is  a  man  of  authority  ;  Menippus  is  as  airy 
as  Lucian  himself.  Other  great  artists  had  attempted 
the  portrait  of  a  misanthrope,  but  none  could  have 
succeeded  better  than  Lucian  in  his '  Timon '.  Doubt 
less  he  had  ample  materials  for  his  study — materials 
that  have  been  lost  to  us.  But  is  is  clear,  from 
internal  evidence,  that  Lucian  stamped  the  character 
anew.  This  Timon  lived  during  the  time  of  the 
Peloponnesian  war,  and  built  himself  a  sort  of  mar- 
tello-tower,  far  from  the  habitations  of  men,  and 
even  in  death  had  his  resting-place  on  a  steep  and 
solitary  and  almost  inaccessible  cliff.  The  chorus 
of  women  in  the  '  Lysistrata '  of  Aristophanes  says 
of  him  (in  substance) : 

Timon  was  a  restless  creature, 
Bantling  of  the  Furies  born, 
And  his  face  had  every  feature 
Girt  about  with  hedge  of  thorn. 
Carried  off  by  hatred,  Timon 
Did  a  lonely  tower  climb  on, 


LUC  IAN.  339 

Whence  he  cursed  with  breath  unbated 
All  the  rascals  that  he  hated. 
Hated  men — but,  be  it  noted, 
To  the  girls  he  was  devoted. 

In  the  '  Birds  ',  Prometheus  says  : 

I  hate  the  gods — each  mother's  son  of  them,  you  know 
I  am  a  perfect  Timoii  pure. 

The  '  Odd-fellow  '  of  the  comic  poet  Phrynichus 
says: 

I  lead  a  Timon's  life — 

No  wife,  no  servant,  verjuiced,  unapproachable; 
I  laugh  not,  talk  not,  cork  myself  within  myself. 

Antiphanes,  one  of  the  chiefs  of  the  Middle  Comedy, 
made  this  eccentric  misanthrope  the  hero  of  one  of 
his  numerous  pieces  ;  but  it  was  reserved  for  Lucian 
to  transmit  the  type  to  modern  times — for  modern 
times  to  misunderstand  the  type  transmitted.  Your 
misanthrope  is  never  himself  a  faultless  character ; 
his  hatred  is  an  inverted  love  of  self;  his  morality 
is  pharisaical.  This  man  Timon  lived  during  the 
Peloponnesian  war,  and  never  felt  it.  He  never 
bore  his  portion  of  the  burden  of  the  state ;  he 
never  shed  a  drop  of  blood  for  his  country ;  and 
not  insignificant  is  the  hint  which  Aristophanes 
gives  us  that  his  virtuous  indignation  was  levelled 
exclusively  at  the  male  sex.  Now,  while  Lucian 
employed  Timon  as  a  catapult  for  shooting  at  the 
follies  and  frailties  of  the  times,  he  did  not  neglect 
the  accurate  draught  of  the  engine  that  he  employed, 
and  bestowed  special  pains  on  the  elaboration  of 
Timon's  character.  Whether  Shakespeare  made 
any  use  of  Lucian's  Timon  we  shall  let  Shakes- 


34O  L  UCIAN. 

peare  scholars  discuss,  but  certain  it  is  that 
between  the  Timon  of  Lucian  and  the  Timon  of 
Shakespeare  there  is  almost  as  wide  an  interval  in 
character  as  in  time. 

In  order  to  understand  properly  the  *  Dialogues 
of  the  Gods ',  the '  Marine  Dialogues ',  the '  Dialogues 
of  the  Dead  ',  and  the  '  Hetseric  Dialogues  ',  we  must 
regard  them  as  so  many  studies  of  form.  He  who 
should  suppose  the  antique  epigram  to  resemble 
the  modern  would  be  disappointed  at  the  absence 
of  point  and  piquancy  in  a  large  proportion  of  the 
epigrams  of  the  Greek  Anthology  ;  he  who  should 
look  for  nothing  but  irony  and  satire  in  these 
dialogues  of  Lucian  would  be  puzzled  to  find 
irony  or  satire  in  many  of  them.  Not  a  few  resist 
analysis.  Complete  and  rounded  they  are,  but 
complete  and  rounded  as  is  the  soap-bubble,  and, 
like  the  soap-bubble,  they  mirror  for  a  moment  sky, 
and  sea,  and  earth,  and  then  vanish  in  an  iridescent 
collapse.  Not  a  few  seem  to  have  been  composed 
merely  for  plastic  effect — merely  to  show  a  rare 
power  of  representation — and  so  belong  to  the 
same  class  as  the  '  Imagines '  of  our  author  and  the 
'  Imagines '  of  Philostratus.  So  the  dialogue  between 
Aphrodite  and  Selene  (D.  D.  n)  exists  simply  for 
the  figure  of  Endymion  '  sleeping  on  a  rock,  with 
his  chlamys  under  him  ;  in  his  left  hand  holding 
his  javelins,  which  are  just  gliding  out  of  his 
grasp,  while  his  right,  bent  above  his  head,  forms  a 
becoming  frame  to  his  face,  and,  all  dissolved  by 
sleep,  he  breathes  his  ambrosial  breath.'  So  the 
main  thing  in  the  dialogue  between  Aphrodite  and 
Eros  (D.  D.  12)  is  the  animated  description  of  the 


LUC  I  AN.  341 

procession  of  Magna  Mater,  with  Cupid  mounting 
her  lions,  catching  hold  of  their  manes  and  putting 
his  head  in  their  mouths.  So  the  twentieth  dia 
logue  merely  serves  to  frame  the  picture  of  Gany 
mede  carried  off  by  Zeus.  It  is  true  that  Lucian 
loves  to  get  human  fun  out  of  the  legends  of  the 
gods.  So  Aphrodite  spanks  Eros  as  Xanthippe 
spanked  Lamprocles.  So  Hera — a  celestial  Mrs. 
Caudle — accounts  for  the  excessive  lenity  which 
Zeus  shows  toward  Ixion  by  his  former  intimacy 
with  Ixion's  wife ;  and  the  same  jealous  goddess 
displays  an  exquisite  malice  when,  vexed  at  La- 
tona's  boasting  of  her  children,  she  says  that  Apollo 
overcame  Marsyas  by  fraud,  and  that  Artemis  set 
her  dogs  on  Actaeon  to  keep  him  from  telling  how 
ugly  she  was.  But  there  is  really  no  more  harm 
in  this  than  in  Homer.  Lucian's  Zeus,  his  Hera, 
his  Hephaestus,  are  miniature  reproductions  of  the 
figures  in  the  great  frieze  of  the  Epic,  and  if  the 
mellow  light  of  the  Homeric  sun  has  faded  into 
white,  the  light  is  a  steady  one  and  the  noble  feat 
ures  of  the  old  mythology  are  not  distorted.  In 
this  regard  Lucian  is  pre-eminently  Greek,  and  not 
Syrian ;  for  herein  we  see  a  wide  difference  between 
Hellenic  and  Semitic.  What  strikes  us  as  peculiar 
in  the  relation  of  the  Greek  to  his  gods  is  its  imme- 
diateness.  It  was  hard  to  convince  the  Hebrews 
that  God  was  a  god  that  was  near.  It  would  have 
been  hard  to  convince  the  Greek  that  his  gods  were 
gods  that  were  afar  off.  He  gazed  into  the  face  of 
Zeus,  the  Prince  of  the  Power  of  the  Ether.  He 
laid  his  hand  on  the  mane  of  Poseidon's  horses. 
He  looked  into  the  bright  eye  of  Pallas,  or  watched 


342  LUCIAN. 

the  glancing  of  her  lightning  spear.  His  gods  lead 
an  easy  life,  and  their  joyousness  pervades  all  who 
approach  them.  Call  this  frivolous,  if  you  choose, 
but  it  is  undeniably  national,  and  the  irreverence  of 
Lucian — in  the  earlier  stage — is  not  to  be  com 
pared  with  the  irreverence  of  Voltaire.  The 
sportive  treatment  of  mythology  would  have  been 
no  evidence  of  unbelief  to  the  countrymen  of 
Homer  and  Aristophanes,  to  the  students  of  the 
Satyr-drama,  to  the  readers  of  the  Middle  Comedy. 
Far  different  is  the  case  with  some  of  the  later  dia 
logues  of  Lucian — with  '  Zeus  Cross-examined ',  and 
'  Zeus  Stage-struck ' — in  which  cynicism  and  epi 
cureanism  alike  issue  in  blank  atheism. 

The  '  Dialogues  of  the  Dead  '  seem  to  belong  to  a 
more  advanced  stage  of  study  than  the  '  Dialogues 
of  the  Gods ',  although  they  do  not  reach  the 
artistic  height  of  the  '  Chanticleer '  or  of  the  '  Double 
Indictment '.  They  form  a  comedy  of  human  life 
not  unlike  the  mediaeval  Dance  of  Death,  for  in 
Lucian's  time  death  was  no  longer  the  brother  of 
sleep,  but  a  grim  and  ghastly  skeleton ;  and  an 
interpreter  of  the  show,  Diogenes  or  Menippus, 
appears  in  more  than  half  the  pieces,  to  point  the 
moral  with  the  bony  finger  of  scorn.  The  text  is 
vanitas  vanitatum,  with  Charon's  boat  for  a  pulpit, 
and  a  cynic  for  a  preacher.  The  theme  is  an 
nounced  in  the  very  first  dialogue,  in  which  the 
rich,  the  great,  the  wise,  the  strong,  are  to  be  taught 
how  brief  and  how  slender  is  the  tenure  of  their 
advantages.  Not  a  little  remarkable,  as  character 
istic  of  the  Graeco-Roman  world,  is  the  large  pro 
portion  of  pieces  which  set  forth  the  miseries  and 


L  UCIAN.  343 

disappointments  of  legacy-hunters.  The  aversion 
to  philosophy  and  philosophers  is  evident  enough, 
but  the  hostility  is  not  so  bitter  as  in  the  '  Lapithae  ', 
and  the  despairing  contempt  not  so  profound  as  in 
'  Hermotimus '.  He  makes  Pythagoras  beg  for  beans, 
represents  Socrates  as  making  a  prodigious  ado  as 
he  goes  down  to  Hades,  and  gives  a  full-length 
portraiture  of  a  philosopher  in  the  longest  of  the 
dialogues,  which  is  absurdly  like  one  of  Bunyan's 
allegories.  But  those  of  our  readers  who  know 
Lucian  at  all  know  the  '  Dialogues  of  the  Dead  ',  and 
we  cannot  stop  to  analyse.  Those  who  do  not  know 
Lucian  may  be  entertained  by  some  specimens  of  his 
grim  humor,  taken  at  random  from  these  and  other 
works  of  his.  When  Menippus  goes  down  to  the 
dead,  he  asks  for  Socrates.  '  You  see  that  bald 
pate,'  says  his  guide.  '  They  are  all  bald  pates.' 
'  I  mean  that  fellow  with  a  flat  nose.'  '  They  have 
all  flat  noses,'  replies  the  Cynic.  Charon  builds 
rafts  to  take  the  extra  passengers  over  in  Alexan 
der's  time,  and  talks  contemptuously  of  the  green 
ghosts  of  babies.  Often  the  sententious  brevity 
reminds  us  of  Shakespeare.  '  This  skull  is  Helen  ', 
recalls  to  our  mind  the  grave-digger's  scene  in 
Hamlet;  and  when  Hermes  says  to  Prometheus, 
'  Mount  up  now,  like  a  good  fellow,  and  have  your 
self  nailed  to  the  mountain  ',  we  seem  to  hear  the 
clown  saying  to  Barnardine,  '  You  must  be  so 
good,  sir,  to  rise  and  be  put  to  death.'  Almost  too 
ghastly  for  fun  is  the  passage  in  which  Menippus 
says  that  his  death  is  not  unnoticed,  '  the  dogs  are 
howling  piteously  over  him,  and  the  ravens  are 
beating  their  breasts  with  their  wings  as  they  come 


344  L  UCIAN. 

together  to  bury  him.'  Some  of  Lucian's  fancies 
are  so  weird  that  we  seem  to  be  standing  upon  the 
German  Brocken,  and  not  upon  the  Greek  Helicon  ; 
and  his  images  are  often  as  grotesque  as  any  of  the 
gargoyles  that  spit  their  spite  from  the  roofs  of 
mediaeval  churches.  Peter  Schlemihl,  or  the  man 
without  a  shadow,  even  if  the  idea  were  entirely 
original — and  it  is  not,  for  Dante's  friend  Vergil 
casts  no  shadow1 — is  not  a  more  striking  fancy  than 
Lucian's  notion  that  our  shadows,  when  we  die,  tell 
on  us  before  the  high  court  of  Hades ;  credible 
witnesses  they,  and  well  informed.  Nor  is  this  play 
of  the  imagination  without  its  deeper  meaning;  as 
where  he  speaks  of  the  invisible  brands  of  vice, 
invisible  here,  but  blazing  out  in  the  lower  world  ; 2 
as  where  he  tells  us  that  the  bed  and  the  lamp  are 
called  to  bear  witness  to  the  crimes  of  Megapen- 
thes,  whose  punishment  is  the  remembrance  of  his 
sins. 

The  '  Hetaeric  Dialogues,  or  Colloquies  of  She- 
fellows  ',  are  not  in  use  as  a  school-book — for 
manifest  reasons ;  and  it  may,  perhaps,  be  best  to 
pass  them  by  in  decorous  silence.  Like  the  rest  of 
Lucian's  dialogues,  they  are  full  of  keen  wit,  of  sly 
humor,  of  droll  situations,  of  vivid  pictures.  But 
those  of  our  younger  readers  that  press  forward 
toward  the  forbidden  would  be  very  much  disap 
pointed  in  them.  There  is  hardly  one  halfpenny 
worth  of  indecency  to  an  intolerable  deal  of  clever- 

1  See  also  Tylor,  Primitive  Culture,  i.  77,  388. 

2  Borrowed  from  Plato,  Gorg.  524  C,  and  borrowed  by  Plato 
from    the  world  of  popular   belief.     See  G.  L.   Kittredge    in 
American  Journal  of  Philology,  viii.  165. — B.  L.  G. 


345 

ness.  To  the  man  of  thought  and  experience  they 
are  sad  reading — as  sad,  we  say  it  gravely,  as 
Defoe's  '  Moll  Flanders '.  We  see  worldly  wisdom, 
or  rather  hellish  cunning,  warring  against  the 
better  instincts  of  maidenly  nature.  We  see  the 
pure  flower  of  true  love  peeping  forth  shyly  from 
amid  the  rank  luxuriance  of  sensual  indulgence. 
Jealousy,  without  which,  says  one  of  the  heroines, 
there  can  be  nothing  but  a  surface  love,  throws  its 
lurid  light  over  these  miniature  pictures,  and  there 
is  no  lack  of  lovers'  quarrels,  of  tempestuous  scenes, 
of  sorcery  and  witchcraft.  Our  old  friend,  the 
Pyrgopolinices  of  Plautus,  turns  up  under  a  new 
name,  and  admirable  is  the  dialogue  in  which  one 
of  these  swaggering  soldiers  tries  to  excite  the 
admiration  of  his  lady-love  by  the  recital  of  his 
bloody  exploits — puts  her  to  flight  instead,  and,  in 
order  to  win  her  back,  is  forced  to  send  a  messenger 
to  tell  her  that  it  was  all  a  lie.  But  we  do  not  pur 
pose  to  detain  our  readers  in  the  neighborhood  of 
*  Kisskin  (Philemation)  the  Coffin,  otherwise  called 
Mantrap ',  and  her  sisters.  Grave  as  the  subject  is, 
there  is  one  still  graver  before  us,  which  we  must 
discuss  before  we  close  this  study. 

We  have  already  seen  that  the  mocking  genius 
of  Lucian  had  called  down  on  him  the  unmeasured 
wrath  of  Christian  grammarians.  In  vain  they 
might  have  been  told  that  Lucian's  shafts  were 
directed  against  nonentities.  Their  Ens  was  the 
legitimate  successor  of  these  heathen  nonentities, 
and  he  who  had  been  disloyal  to  one  set  of  masters 
would  have  been  disloyal  to  the  true  monarch.  It 
must  have  been  the  utter  want  of  veneration,  the 


346  LUCIAN. 

utter  nihilism  of  the  still-denying  spirit—  der  Geist 
der  stets  verneint — that  offended  them  so ;  for,  apart 
from  the  confessedly  spurious  dialogue,  Philopatris, 
there  is  really  no  formal  opposition  in  Lucian  to  the 
Christian  religion.  Lucian  floats  with  the  current 
of  disintegration  ;  he  has  no  sympathy  with  any 
attempt  to  restore  the  old  faith.  Philostratus  gives 
an  apotheosis  of  Apollonius  of  Tyana.  Lucian 
delights  in  holding  up  to  the  contempt  of  all  sober- 
minded  men  the  false  prophet  Alexander,  a  successor 
of  the  famous  Tyanite.  Lucian  wanted  a  heathen 
ideal  as  little  as  he  understood  the  reality  of  the 
Christian  faith.  To  him  the  Christian  religion  was  but 
one  of  the  strange  elements  let  loose  in  the  breaking 
up  of  the  fountains  of  the  great  deep ;  and  the  lively 
satirist  of  the  second  century,  and  the  saturnine  his 
torian  of  the  first,  alike  failed  to  recognize  the 
Saviour  of  the  world  in  the  man  whom  they  called 
'  one  Christus  ',  '  a  sophist '.  It  is  only  in  a  sketch 
of  Alexander,  and  in  a  remarkable  account  of  the 
death  of  Peregrinus,  that  Lucian  makes  any  direct 
mention  of  the  Christian  religion.  We  have  already 
noticed  what  some  have  considered  an  allusion  to  the 
Gospel,  in  the  '  Lie-fancier ',  and  there  is  a  striking 
resemblance  to  the  Heavenly  City  of  the  Apoca 
lypse  in  the  description  of  the  Island  of  the 
Blessed,  in  the  '  True  Story '.  But  both  of  these 
allusions,  the  former  perhaps  more  readily  than  the 
latter,  may  be  otherwise  accounted  for;  and  we 
must  look  to  the  passages  in  '  Alexander '  and  in 
'  Peregrinus  '  for  Lucian's  views.  The  '  Alexander ' 
is  a  vivid  portraiture  of  the  miracle-mongers  and 
oracle-peddlers  of  the  age,  and  had  we  not  already 


LUC  IAN.  347- 

outrun  the  lines  of  our  sketch  we  should  be 
tempted  to  give  the  reader  at  least  a  glimpse  of 
the  impostor's  life.  The  great  field  of  Alexander's 
operations  was  Cappadocia,  the  inhabitants  of  which 
were  noted  for  their  laziness  and  stupidity.  As 
Cappadocia  was  one  of  the  foci  of  early  Chris 
tianity,  some  apologists  have' thought  it  worth  their 
while  to  defend  the  character  of  the  Cappadocians, 
and  at  least  one  of  them  has  done  Ireland  the  gross 
injustice  of  comparing  her  people  with  those  imper 
fect  Christians.  Yet,  very  much  to  the  credit  of 
those  imperfect  Christians,  we  learn  that  Alexander 
found  them  a  serious  stumbling-block  in  the  way  of 
his  success,  and  classed  them  with  the  Epicureans  in 
his  ukase  against  the  skeptics,  and  that  he  was 
wont  to  open  prayers  by  saying,  '  Out  with  the 
Christians ! '  And  all  the  people  answered,  '  Out 
with  the  Epicureans ! '  Somewhat  inconsistent 
with  this  wise  incredulity  is  the  character  given  to 
the  Christians  in  the  '  Death  of  Peregrinus ',  one  of 
the  most  curious  documents  of* that  age.  This  Per 
egrinus  Proteus,1  who  burned  himself  alive  at  the 
Olympic  games  in  A.  D.  165 — Lucian  being  present 
— had  been  a  Christian  before  he  became  a  Cynic. 

1  Since  these  pages  were  first  published,  the  whole  subject 
has  been  handled  with  the  masterly  grasp  peculiar  to  him  by 
my  friend  and  teacher,  the  late  Jakob  Bernays,  in  his  Lukian 
und  die  Kyniker,  mit  einer  Uebersetzung  der  Schrift  Lukians 
iiber  das  Lebensende  des  Peregrinus;  Berlin,  1879.  The 
study  of  this  monograph  stirred  a  certain  rebelliousness  in  me 
at  the  time,  but  it  is  always  easier  to  rebel  against  Bernays's 
conclusions  than  to  meet  them.  The  French  scholar,  cited 
above,  dissents  from  Bernays  on  the  ground  of  the  dates  of  the 
several  dialogues.  See  M.  Croiset,  1.  c.  p.  36.— B.  L.  G. 


348  LUCIAN. 

After  strangling  his  father  he  ran"  away  from 
his  Armenian  home,  and  learned  in  Palestine  the 
strange  wisdom  of  the  Christians  from  their  priests 
and  scribes.  In  a  short  time  they  were  all  children 
to  him.  He  was  their  prophet,  the  manager  of 
their  feasts,  the  chief  of  their  assemblies,  and  their 
all  in  all.  Some  of  their  books  he  interpreted  and 
expounded  ;  many  of  them  he  composed  ;  and  they 
looked  up  to  him  as  a  god  and  obeyed  him  as  a 
law-giver,  and  inscribed  his  name  on  their  records 
as  their  president.  These  people,  by  the  way,  adore 
that  great  personage1  that  was  crucified  in  Palestine 
for  introducing  this  new  worship  into  the  world. 
On  the  charge  of  adhering  to  this  sect,  Peregrinus 
was  arrested  and  thrown  into  jail,  a  circumstance 
that  of  itself  was  of  no  small  service  in  helping  on 
his  marvel-mongery  and  his  itching  for  notoriety. 
When  he  was  put  in  prison  the  Christians  took 
the  matter  very  much  to  heart  and  tried  every 
means  to  get  him  out;  and  when  this  proved 
to  be  impossible,  they  showed  him  all  manner  of 
attention.  Early  in  the  morning  you  might  have 
seen  old  women  and  widows  and  orphan  children 
waiting  outside  the  jail,  and  the  church  officers 
bribed  the  jailors  to  let  them  sleep  inside  with  the 
prisoner.  All  kinds  of  viands  were  taken  in  to  him, 
their  sacred  writings  were  read  aloud,  and  our 
worthy  Peregrinus  was  called  by  them  a  second 
Socrates ;  and  actually  commissioners  were  sent  by 
the  communities  in  Asia  Minor  to  help  him,  to  act 
as  his  counsel  and  to  minister  consolation.  Extra 
ordinary  is  the  activity  which  these  people  show 

1  peyav  is  critically  uncertain. 


L  UCIAN.  349 

when  anything  affects  the  community,  and  they 
spare  nothing ;  and  in  this  way  much  money  came 
in  for  Peregrinus  on  account  of  his  imprisonment, 
and  he  made  himself  a  fine  income  from  that  source. 
For  these  poor  devils  have  brought  themselves  to 
believe  that  they  will  be  immortal,  body  and  soul, 
and  live  forever.  Therefore  they  despise  death, 
and,  in  most  cases,  give  themselves  up  to  it.  And 
then  their  first  law-giver  persuaded  them  that  they 
were  brethren  one  of  another,  when  they  once  go 
over  and  renounce  the  gods  of  the  Greeks  and 
adore  that  crucified  professor  (sophist)  and  live 
according  to  his  laws.  So  then  they  despise 
everything  alike  and  deem  all  things  common 
without  any  clear  ground  for  the  acceptance  of 
such  tenets.  If,  then,  any  impostor  or  juggler, 
who  understands  management,  goes  over  to  them, 
he  gets  rich  in  a  trice  and  leads  his  innocent 
friends  by  the  nose.  However,  Peregrinus  was 
released  by  the  governor  of  Syria,  a  person  of  a 
philosophic  turn  of  mind,  who  saw  that  the  fellow 
had  a  crazy  ambition  to  die,  and  frustrated  his  hopes 
by  discharging  him  without  punishment.  After 
his  discharge  he  was  abundantly  supplied  by  the 
Christians,  who  were  regular  satellites  of  his,  until 
he  ate  some  forbidden  food  and  was  cast  out  of 
the  brotherhood. 

Imperfect  as  this  representation  is,  it  is  evident 
that  the  light  has  begun  to  shine,  though  the 
darkness  comprehends  it  so  imperfectly,  and  that 
Lucian's  view  of  Christianity  is  clearer  than  the  view 
of  Tacitus.  Indeed  some  have  seen  in  the  adjective 
'  wonderful ',  which  we  have  translated  ' strange  ',  in 


35O  LUC  I  AN. 

this  '  wonderful  wisdom  of  the  Christians  ',  a  note 
of  admiration,  forgetting  that  a  few  pages  further  on 
Lucian  uses  the  same  adjective  of  his  hero's  subse 
quent  mode  of  life,  shaving  half  his  head,  besmear 
ing  his  face  with  mud,  and  indulging  in  unmen 
tionable  indecencies.  No!  The  mocking  spirit 
that  called  Christ 'a  professor ',  and  the  Christians 
'  unfortunates  ',  had  no  appreciation  or  admiration 
of  our  faith.  '  It  was  to  him  ',  says  a  writer  on  this 
subject,  correctly  enough,  *  only  one  parti-colored 
stone  the  more  in  the  mad  kaleidoscope  of  the 
times.'  Yet  we  can  see  that  the  brotherhood  of 
Christians  was  beginning  to  be  recognized  as  an 
important  agency ;  and  we  observe  the  growth  of 
a  two-fold  hate,  the  hate  of  the  populace  directed 
against  the  atheism  of  the  Christians,  the  hate  of 
the  politicians  directed  against  their  socialistic 
organization. 

But  we  must  close,  and  not  without  a  feeling  of 
sadness.  For  Lucian  is  really,  as  we  have  said 
elsewhere,  one  of  the  saddest  of  authors.  If  you 
read  him  from  time  to  time,  if  you  take  a  peep  from 
time  to  time  at  his  puppet-show,  you  may  enjoy 
his  comic  force.  But  if  you  read  him,  as  we  have 
done,  consecutively  for  days  and  days,  then  the 
whole  head  becomes  sick  and  the  whole  heart  faint. 
You  can  ride  for  weeks  and  months  on  the  ocean 
of  Homer.  You  can  float  for  weeks  and  months 
in  the  ether  of  Plato's  speculations.  But  Lucian 
wearies,  as  the  theatre  wearies,  as  the  pantomime, 
as  the  circus.  The  whole  age  which  he  represents 
is  a  painful  sham, — the  mock  philosopher,  with  his 
long  beard,  his  rough  cassock,  his  knotty  staff,  his 


LUCIAN.  351 

ragged  wallet, — the  pretentious  rhetorician,  with 
his  rich  apparel,  his  mincing  gait,  his  cooing  voice, 
— the  ignorant  parvenu,  the  ignominious  parasite, 
the  magician,  and  the  charlatan.  Above  the  motley 
crowd  hang  suspended  by  too  evident  wires  the  lay 
figures  of  the  Immortal  Gods.  In  the  background, 
in  the  vitae  poscaenia  we  descry  the  only  part  of  the 
show  that  seems  to  have  any  reality — Charon  and 
the  shades  of  the  dead.  And  what  sadder  figure 
than  the  showman  himself,  wandering  from  Rhetoric 
to  Philosophy,  from  Philosophy  to  Comedy,  from 
Comedy  back  to  Rhetoric ;  what  real  purpose  of 
life  he  ever  had,  blunted  or  warped ;  what  faith  he 
ever  had,  gone.  No  hope,  no  love.  No  good  God 
for  him  but  good  Greek. 

Plainly  the  end  of  the  old  world  is  at  hand.  The 
Stoic  may  simulate  religion,  but  he  cannot  satisfy 
the  cravings  of  the  heart,  as  he  is  powerless  to 
direct  the  life.  The  Epicurean  may  bury  the 
spiritual  nature  under  a  thick  layer  of  materialistic 
reasoning,  but  the  spirit  will  not  down.  Magic  rites 
appeal  to  the  powers  of  the  unseen  world.  Strange 
gods  are  evoked  from  the  mystic  East ;  Mithras  and 
Derceto,  the  purer  forms  of  Persian  religion,  the 
coarser  symbolism  of  Syria.  The  old  systems  of 
faith  and  philosophy  are  dropping  to  pieces.  New 
combinations  are  forming.  The  'activity  '  of  those 
'  unfortunates ',  the  Christians,  is  becoming  not  only 
'  extraordinary '  but  portentous.  A  great  struggle 
is  preparing.  Lucian  has  swept  the  arena. 


THE  EMPEROR  JULIAN 


THE  EMPEROR  JULIAN.' 

Midway  between  the  Black  Sea  and  the  Mediter 
ranean  rises  the  country  of  Cappadocia  proper,  a 
land  neither  blessed  by  nature  nor  improved  by 
art.2  Its  barren  steppes  are  exposed  to  the  rays  of 
the  burning  sun,  and  its  high  table-land  is  swept  by 
the  unresisted  wind.  Cold  in  winter  and  hot  in 
summer,  it  combines  with  uncomfortable  impar 
tiality  both  extremes  of  temperature.  Here  and 
there,  by  diligent  search,  the  traveller  may  find  a 
fertile  valley  hidden  away  among  the  mountains ; 
but  these  green  strips  are  narrow,  and  narrow  are 
the  streams  to  which  their  verdure  is  due.  The 
mountains  above  are  rugged  and  bare,  and  such 
wealth  as  the  land  has  is  not  in  its  fields,  but  in  its 
flocks  and  herds.  In  olden  times  the  face  of  this 

1i.  Flavius  Claudius  Julianus.  Nach  den  Quellen.  Von  J. 
F.  R.  Mucke.  Gotha  :  1866. 

2.  Etude  sur  Julien.     Par  Eugene  Talbot.     Paris  :   1863. 

3.  Ueber  Kaiser  Julianus  Apostata.     Von  Karl    Gutzkow. 
Dresden:   1857. 

4.  Kaiser  Julianus  im  Kampfe  mit  dem  Kirchenvatern  seiner 
Zeit.     Geschildert  von  Dr.  J.  E.  Auer.     Wien  :  1855. 

5.  Der  Romantiker  auf  dem  Throne  der   Caesaren ;  oder 
Julian  der  Abtrtinnige.     Von  David  Fr.  Strauss.     Mannheim  : 
1847- 

2  This  paper  is  the  earliest  of  these  essays.  Prepared  as  a 
lecture  in  1857,  but  never  delivered,  it  lay  in  my  desk  ten  years, 
and  after  a  slight  revision  was  published  in  the  Southern 
Review  for  January,  1868.— B.  L.  G. 


356  THE   EMPEROR  JULIAN. 

uninviting  country  was  pimpled  over  with  castles  ; 
for  the  inhabitants  were  a  rascally  race  and  had  to 
guard  against  each  other  what  little  there  was  to 
guard.  Like  their  climate,  they  united  opposite 
vices  in  a  peculiarly  unhappy  amalgam.  Fierce 
and  cowardly,  stupid  and  sly  withal ;  as  lazy  as  they 
were  stalwart  and  as  awkward  as  they  were  lazy, 
the  Cappadocians  were  for  ages  the  butt  of  the 
Roman  satirist  and  of  the  Greek  wit.  Cappadocian 
slaves  were  a  drug  in  the  market  of  Rome  ;  and  the 
last  kings  of  Cappadocia,  who  had  nothing  to  sell 
except  their  serfs,  are  cited  by  Cicero  and  Horace 
as  the  poorest  of  the  poor.  Old  exaggerations  were 
piled  up  again  for  their  sake ;  old  epigrams  furbished 
up  for  their  benefit.  Your  Cappadocian  orator  was 
a  rarity  like  a  white  crow  or  a  winged  tortoise. 
A  viper  bit  a  Cappadocian,  and  lo ! 

The  man  recovered  from  the  bite, 
The  '  snake  '  it  was  that  died. 

Nor  did  Christianity,  at  least  to  all  appearance, 
better  these  incorrigibles  much.  Violent  heathen, 
when  they  were  heathen,  they  were  no  less  violent 
Christians  when  they  became  Christians ;  and  even 
their  saints  have  not  been  suffered  to  have  a  quiet 
canonization  or  to  enjoy  a  comfortable  niche  in  the 
calendar.  The  Cappadocian  St.  George,  an  Arian 
saint,  whom  Gibbon  maliciously  identifies  with  the 
champion  of  England,  was  a  holy  man  after  a 
peculiar  pattern.  A  fraudulent  pork-commissary  as 
a  layman,  a  truculent  tyrant  as  a  prelate,  he  deserves 
more  attention  than  he  has  received  at  the  hands  of 
his  unconscious  imitators  in  these  latter  days. 


THE  EMPEROR   JULIAN.  357 

More  than  fifteen  hundred  years  ago — to  be  exact, 
in  the  year  of  our  sera,  345 — one  of  the  many  castles 
of  this  country  was  turned  into  a  respectable  jail  for 
the  reception  of  two  young  gentlemen  of  high  rank. 
No  less  personages — as  the  Court  Journal  would 
say — than  the  cousins  of  the  reigning  Emperor  and 
the  nephews  of  Constantine  the  Great.  The  elder 
of  the  brothers  was  a  comely  youth,  of  noble  pres 
ence  and  well-knit  limbs,  with  handsome  features 
and  soft  silky  hair.  The  younger  was  like  his 
brother  in  his  strong  build  and  fine  hair,  but  his 
figure  was  less  symmetrical,  and  the  ugliness  of  the 
lower  part  of  his  face,  with  its  drooping,  uncertain 
lip,  was  redeemed  only  by  the  preternatural  bright 
ness  of  his  eyes,  in  which  there  shone  the  light  of 
genius,  or,  as  some  say,  the  fire  of  madness.  The 
reader  thoroughly  conversant  with  the  history  of 
the  house  of  Constantine,  as  all  readers  are  sup 
posed  to  be,  has  already  divined  that  this  boy  was 
Julian ;  nor  need  we  say  that  at  this  early  period 
of  his  life,  Julian  did  not  know  what  a  figure  he 
was  to  make  in  the  world,  nor  that  his  pretty  name 
was  to  go  down  to  after  ages  coupled  with  the 
disfiguring  title  of  Apostate. 

Nor  is  it  necessary  to  say  that  his  enigmatical 
character  has  provoked  discussions  innumerable. 
If  ever  a  poor  mortal  has  been  raised  to  the  skies, 
it  is  Julian ;  now  tossed  in  a  blanket  by  sturdy 
ecclesiastics,  now  floating  on  a  cloud  of  perfume 
from  the  censers  of  '  good  old  pagan  gentlemen '. 
True  to  her  traditions,  the  Catholic  Church  has 
followed  him  with  relentless  hatred  through  all 
these  centuries ;  and  only  a  few  years  ago,  one  Dr. 


THE   EMPEROR  JULIAN. 

Auer  of  Vienna  took  up  his  parable  and  cursed 
Julian's  day  in  a  volume  of  450  pages,  with  an 
energy  which  reminds  us  of  Job.  If  we  turn  to  the 
Protestants,  we  find  that,  by  a  singular  whirligig  of 
fortune,  some  of  the  most  decided  Christians  of 
modern  times  have  been  his  encomiasts ;  some  of 
the  most  decided  heathen  have  been  lukewarm  in 
praising  him,  or  bitter  in  ridiculing  him.  Neander, 
the  historian  of  the  Church,  is  charged  with 
elevating  him  to  an  ideal  height  beyond  the  ken  of 
the  narrow-minded  Fathers ;  while  Gibbon,  though 
forced  at  times  to  compliment  the  hero,  turns  with 
comparative  coldness  from  the  enthusiast;  and 
Strauss,  who  has  made  Christ  a  mythical  evolution 
and  evaporated  the  Glad  Tidings  of  Great  Joy, 
sneers  at  the  reactionist  of  those  days  as  he  sneers 
at  the  conservatives  of  these.  Of  parallels — a  mur 
rain  on  the  man  who  invented  them! — there  is 
absolutely  no  end.  At  one  time  he  is  a  Hadrian, 
with  a  shade  less  of  this  and  a  shade  more  of  that; 
at  another  a  Marcus  Aurelius,  with  a  little  more 
Cynicism  and  a  little  less  Stoicism.  Now  he  is 
compared  to  James  the  First  of  England,  the  pedant 
on  the  throne ;  now  to  Mr.  Carlyle's  Friedrich  and 
other  people's  Frederick  the  Great,  the  warrior,  the 
statesman,  the  infidel ;  now  to  Napoleon  the  Third, 
the  crowned  adventurer.  A  Catholic  writer  sug 
gests  a  parallel  with  Gustavus  Adolphus,  the  Pro 
testant  hero  ;  and  worse  than  all,  a  clever  pamphlet 
by  Strauss,  entitled  '  The  Romanticist  on  the 
Throne',  was  intended  to  hold  up  to  ridicule,  in 
the  person  of  Julian,  His  Majesty  of  Vinous 
Memory — the  late  King  of  Prussia,  Frederick  Wil- 


THE  EMPEROR  JULIAN.  359 

Ham  the  Fourth.  Poor  old  King  Clicquot! — as 
Punch  used  to  call  him — who  can  bear  him  any 
malice  now  ?  A  good,  amiable,  accomplished  gen 
tleman,  witty,  too,  it  is  said,  after  the  Teutonic 
standard,  and,  in  fact,  an  excellent  fellow  until  he 
fell  into  the  weakness  of  prevaricating  about  consti 
tutions  and  drinking  too  much  champagne — cer 
tainly  his  sad  end  stops  the  mouth  of  the  critic. 
American  clergymen  were  always  charmed  with 
his  pious  sentiments ;  and,  though  he  was  a  trifle 
too  High  Church  for  some  of  them,  we  can  imagine 
with  what  horror  all  of  them  would  regard  such  a 
parallelism  as  Strauss  has  suggested.  But  though 
Strauss's  work  is  adroitly  done,  his  success  is  indif 
ferent  ;  for  Julian's  nature  is  too  decided,  too  mas 
culine,  to  be  caricatured  into  any  resemblance  to 
the  flabby  texture  of  Frederick  William.  It  is  one 
thing  to  be  a  patron  of  mediaeval  fripperies  in  reli 
gion,  in  government  and  in  art ;  another  thing  to 
attempt  the  upholding  of  the  whole  structure  of  a 
national  life  of  centuries  :  and  this  effort  was  made 
by  Julian,  made  consciously,  made  fruitlessly,  made 
for  the  last  time.  And  just  here  lies  the  charm  that 
attracts  the  student  of  history  to  the  scrutiny  of 
that  problematic  character.  The  man  himself  is 
repellent;  the  more  we  study  him  and  the  more 
we  admire  him,  the  less  we  love  him ;  the  more  we 
pity,  the  less  we  embrace.  It  is  only  as  the  last 
champion  of  a  great  system  that  we  can  sympathize 
with  him  as  we  sympathize  with  the  dying  throes 
of  the  Empire.  For,  in  his  eyes,  the  old  religion 
of  the  Roman  state  was  the  mainstay  of  its  exist 
ence  ;  and  foreseeing  as  he  did  the  destruction  of 


360  THE   EMPEROR  JULIAN. 

the  whole  fabric,  he  rises  to  heroic  dignity  in  his 
struggle  with  the  inevitable.  That  he  challenged 
destiny  but  heightens  the  interest.  The  match, 
which  Seneca  deemed  worthy  of  a  god,  is  not  'a 
good  man  struggling  with  adversity  ',  but  '  a  brave 
man  pitted  against  ill-fortune — especially  if  he  is 
the  one  that  gave  the  challenge ' —  Vir  fortis  cum 
fortuna  mala  compositus — utique  si  et  provocavit.  In 
this  voluntary  duel  the  imperial  actor  stands  alone. 
Himself  alone  in  earnest,  he  tries  in  vain  to  make 
himself  believe  that  those  who  claim  to  be  his 
supporters  are  in  earnest  too ;  and  this  wilful  self- 
deception  is  not  the  least  tragic  feature  in  this 
strange  drama.  But,  unlike  those  great  masterpieces 
of  Greek  art  which  agitate  the  warring  elements  of 
merciless  fate  and  stubborn  will  only  to  reconcile 
them  at  last  in  a  divine  harmony,  Julian's  tragedy 
has  no  peaceful  close.  There  is  no  divided  right 
and  wrong  here,  for  the  power  of  Christianity  was 
neither  dead  nor  asleep  even  in  that  inane  period  of 
phrase-makers  and  trope-mongers  ;  and  if  Julian 
was  not  a  Christian,  it  was  because  he  did  not  like 
to  retain  God  in  his  knowledge.  The  Empire  was 
his  God.  'A  traitor  to  his  God  ',  says  Prudentius, 
'  though  none  to  Rome  '; — 

Perfidus  ille  Deo  quamvis  non  perfidus  Urbi — 

little  understanding  that  Julian  deemed  an  allegi 
ance  to  the  God  of  the  Christians  incompatible  with 
the  service  of  the  Eternal  City.  But  we  are  far 
from  asserting  that  this  view  exhausts  the  signifi 
cance  of  Julian  as  an  historical  character ;  and  if  it 
did,  the  maintenance  of  such  a  theme  would  require 


THE   EMPEROR  JULIAN.  361 

a  space  disproportioned  to  any  possible  interest  on 
the  part  of  our  readers.  It  is  not  the  political  but 
the  religious  side  of  the  controversy  that  presents 
the  most  piquant  situations ;  and  our  little  essay, 
written  *  without  anger  or  partiality',  is  not  well 
adapted  to  tickle  the  itching  ears  of  religious  dis 
putants.  We  have  no  desire  to  use  Julian's  sceptre 
as  a  ferule  to  rap  the  Fathers  over  the  knuckles, 
nor  shall  we  defile  Julian's  philosophic  beard  in 
order  to  cast  discredit  on  conservatism.  Simply 
wishing  ourselves  to  know  a  little  more  about 
Julian  than  the  ordinary  manuals  furnish,  we  have 
made  from  time  to  time  holiday  incursions  into  the 
debateable  ground  of  his  age ;  and  if  the  reader 
imagines  that  the  results  of  these  expeditions  have 
a  meaning  for  the  present  times,  he  is  welcome  to 
be  filled  with  his  own  devices. 

The  period  in  Julian's  life  at  which  we  have  intro 
duced  him  cannot  be  despatched  with  a  passing 
notice.  Our  maturity  is  not  all;  and  the  clear 
record  of  riper  years  has  no  such  charm  as  the  dim 
shadows  that  genius  has  now  and  then  evoked 
from  the  recollections  of  early  childhood.  Indeed, 
the  genuine  life  of  a  child  would  be  the  greatest 
accession  to  our  knowledge  of  human  character  and 
motives ;  but  the  child  has  not  the  power  of  repre 
sentation,  and  the  man  has  lost  the  material:  So 
the  autobiography  of  Goethe,  in  which  he  endeavors 
to  reproduce  the  first  years  of  his  life,  gives  us, 
after  all,  nothing  but  an  idealized  picture.  Thus  it 
is  that  we  remain  strangers  to  ourselves ;  and  we 
may  each  say  as  Austin  said  of  his  youth  :  Behold 
my  infancy  is  dead  and  yet  I  live.  If  we  could  but 


362  THE   EMPEROR  JULIAN. 

read  the  true  record  of  the  six  long  years  which 
Julian  spent  in  that  Cappadocian  castle,  we  should 
understand  far  better  his  subsequent  course.  We 
can  only  gather  from  his  own  writings  that  he 
looked  back  with  horror  upon  those  days  of  dreary 
confinement — those  years  without  playmates.  Not 
that  his  seclusion  was  absolute.  He  had  one  com 
panion,  his  brother  Gallus,  and  no  end  of  attendants 
as  befitted  his  rank ;  but  those  attendants,  under 
the  guise  of  servants,  were  spies  and  enemies,  and 
he  was  too  old  and  too  shrewd  not  to  suspect.  But 
whilst  Julian  became  morbid,  Gallus  became  feroc 
ious,  and  his  wild  nature  was  embittered  into  sav 
agery  by  his  long  imprisonment.  The  picturesque 
historian  of  the  period  always  speaks  of  him  as  an 
animal — now  as  a  lion  battening  on  corpses,  now  as 
a  serpent  writhing  in  impotent  rage  against  the  fatal 
missiles ;  and  before  he  left  his  cage  he  doubtless 
gave  signal  proofs  of  his  hunger  for  mischief.  Still 
Julian  felt  his  kindred.  It  was  not  only  the  soft 
hair  that  they  had  in  common,  but  the  hot  blood 
also ;  and  the  harshest  acts  of  Julian's  reign  were 
caused  by  the  desire  of  avenging  his  brother's  mur 
der.  The  teachers  appointed  to  instruct  him — for 
his  education  was  not  wholly  neglected  in  his 
prison — were  drillmasters,  whose  office  it  was  to 
prepare  the  young  prince  for  the  monastic  profes 
sion  to  which  he  was  destined  ;  and  the  subtleties 
of  theological  dogmas,  and  the  minute  details  of  the 
martyrologies,  were  as  little  to  his  taste  then  as  the 
catechism  is  to  that  of  most  unregenerate  boys  at 
the  present  day.  Much  of  his  time  was  doubtless 
spent  in  private  study ;  and  we  gather  from  one  of 


THE   EMPEROR  JULIAN.  363 

his  letters  that  he  was  in  the  habit  of  borrowing 
and  copying  books.  But  still  much  of  his  time 
he  was  left  to  himself — most  dangerous  company 
for  his  ardent  mind — and  to  such  consolation  as 
nature  might  afford.  Unfortunately,  the  wild  and 
barren  steppes  that  surrounded  his  prison  could 
only  enhance  his  misery ;  and  if  every  line  of  Char 
lotte  Bronte's  writings  reflects  the  dreary  landscape 
of  her  Yorkshire  home,  and  Tennyson  is  incompre 
hensible  without  the  fens  of  Lincolnshire,  it  is  not 
altogether  fanciful  in  us  to  assert  that  we  can  see 
and  feel  the  desolation  of  Cappadocia  in  the  hard 
ness  of  a  style  which  all  the  acquired  graces  of 
classic  expression  could  never  soften.  Nor  is  it 
improbable  that  by  the  sky-gazing  and  star-gazing 
of  these  six  long  years  his  mind  was  prepared  for 
the  reception  of  a  mystic  religion  of  light,  which  is 
variously  symbolized  in  his  writings.  Perhaps,  too, 
he  spent  no  small  part  of  his  prison  life  in  thinking 
over  the  past,  which  in  his  case  must  have  cast  an 
ominous  shadow  into  his  future.  Let  us  sum  up 
that  past. 

Constantine  the  Great,  the  first  Christian  emperor, 
was,  as  is  well  known,  a  sorry  Christian  in  theory 
and  in  practice.  He  has  his  admirers,  doubtless — 
who  has  not  ? — but  there  are  few  who  will  go  the 
length  of  John  Fox  in  praising  'the  noble  Acts  and 
heavenly  Vertus  of  this  most  famus  Emperor,  a 
singular  spectacle',  quoth  John/ for  all  Christian 
Princes  to  behold  and  imitate,  and  worthy  of  Per 
petual  Memory  in  all  congregations  of  Christian 
Saints.'  A  singular  spectacle,  indeed,  if  history  is 
to  be  half  trusted:  a  Christian  from  policy,  his 


364  THE  EMPEROR  JULIAN. 

religion,  such  as  it  was,  tainted  with  heathenish 
superstition  ;  a  pagan  pontiff  and  a  Christian  cate 
chumen  with  a  stain  of  blood  on  his  hands  such 
as  would  almost  make  Christian  and  pagan  alike 
despair  of  forgiveness.  This  singular  spectacle — 
this  great  and  good  man — died  in  the  year  337,  and 
left  his  memory  to  be  canonized  by  the  Christians, 
deified  by  the  pagans,  and  his  kingdom  to  be 
divided  among  his  three  sons.  But  the  division 
was  ushered  in  with  blood  ;  and  Constantius,  who 
finally  became  ruler  of  the  whole  empire,  put  the 
father,  uncle,  and  eldest  brother  of  Julian  to  death. 
Julian's  father  was  the  half-brother  of  Constantine 
the  Great,  the  adherent  of  Constantine  the  younger ; 
either  count  of  the  indictment  would  have  been 
enough  in  those  remorseless  times,  in  which  Ori 
ental  cruelty  was  grafted  on  Roman  and  bore 
abundant  fruit.  Gallus  and  Julian  would  have 
shared  the  fate  of  their  brother;  but  Gallus  was 
saved  by  sickness,  Julian  by  his  tender  years.  Born 
at  Constantinople — and  hence  he  calls  himself  with 
his  usual  affectation  a  Thracian — born  in  331,  he 
was  little  more  than  six  years  old  at  the  time  of  the 
massacre,  but  not  too  young  to  have  some  appre 
ciation  of  the  misfortune  which  had  beiallen  him. 
His  mother  had  died  when  he  was  a  baby,  and  now 
fatherless  too,  he  was  left  to  the  tender  mercies  of  a 
man  who  was  weak,  and,  by  reason  of  his  weakness, 
cruel.  True,  Constantius  has  been  unfortunate  in 
his  biographers.  Pagans  abused  him ;  he  was  a 
Christian.  Christians  abused  him ;  he  was  a  her 
etic.  But  indeed  there  is  little  good  in  the  man. 
He  was  feeble  and  vain,  false  and  tyrannical.  A 


THE.  EMPEROR  JULIAN.  365 

certain  kingly  dignity  he  had,  a  certain  grace  of 
manner  which  was  denied  to  his  successor ;  but  his 
end  was  not  sufficiently  tragic  to  save  his  memory, 
and  every  passer-by  flings  a  stone  at  him.  At  first 
Constantius  did  not  give  himself  much  concern 
about  the  education  of  his  young  cousin,  who  was 
confided  to  the  care  of  a  domestic  tutor,  Mardonius 
by  name,  a  man  whose  influence  determined  the 
direction  of  Julian's  mind.  Years  afterwards  the 
Emperor  attributed  his  love  for  all  that  was  Greek, 
for  the  Greek  language,  philosophy,  and  religion, 
to  the  instructions  of  his  humble  teacher,  who 
guided  him  through  the  picture-gallery  of  Homer, 
who  taught  his  boyish  imagination  to  struggle 
up  towards  the  dreams  of  Plato,  who  made  him 
familiar  with  the  undying  forms  of  Hellenic  myth 
ology,  and  regulated  his  conduct  according  to  the 
precepts  of  pagan  morality.  He  was  a  Greek  in  his 
feelings  and  a,  Greekling  in  his  manners.  If  he  was 
ostentatious  and  talkative,  so  were  the  Greeks.  For 
this  is  the  great  defect  of  the  Greek  character  as 
viewed  with  modern  eyes.  Their  souls  seem  to  live 
out  of  door  ;  and  as  legislation  is  an  index  and  not 
a  remedy  of  depravity,  so  the  numerous  precepts 
of  Greek  philosophers  show  only  that  the  disease 
was  common,  not  that  it  was  ever  cured. 

After  some  years  of  this  happy  neglect,  Con 
stantius  bethought  him  of  the  boys,  who  were  now 
becoming  old  enough  to  attract  attention  as  pos 
sible  successors  to  the  Empire,  and  relegated  them 
to  the  castle  in  Cappadocia,  where  we  found  them. 
But  as  time  went  on  and  it  became  evident  that 
Constantius  could  have  no  hope  of  heirs  by  his 


366  THE    EMPEROR  JULIAN. 

wife,  the  Emperor  began  to  regard  his  childlessness 
as  the  punishment  of  his  crimes;  and  in  351  he 
showed  his  purpose  to  make  some  amends  to  the 
children  of  his  murdered  kinsman  by  opening  their 
prison  doors  and  appointing  Callus  Caesar.  Callus 
went  out  of  his  cage,  with  his  naturally  fine  appe 
tite  for  blood  whetted  by  his  long  confinement, 
devouring  and  to  devour.  Julian  went  first  to 
Constantinople  and  thence  to  Nicomedea,  a  famous 
city  on  the  high-road  to  the  East,  where  the  Ori 
ental  element  mingled  with  the  Greek  in  philo 
sophy,  religion  and  manners.  It  was  here  that  the 
Neo-Platonic  school  of  philosophy  had  one  of  its 
most  flourishing  seats ;  and  here  Julian,  already 
imbued  with  the  love  of  Greek  literature,  and  weary 
of  the  letter,  and  rebellious  against  the  spirit,  of  the 
Christian  religion,  threw  himself  with  all  his  native 
fervor  into  the  arms  of  a  system  which,  unlike  the 
Christian,  violated  none  of  the  traditions  of  the 
past,  and  yet  addressed  itself  to  the  deeper  wants 
of  a  nature  which  those  traditions  could  not  satisfy. 
For  who  in  that  age  could  be  satisfied  with  the  dead 
figures  of  the  old  mythology  ?  Who  believed  in 
the  jocund  deities  of  Homer,  or  the  starch  personi 
fications  of  the  Romans  ?  All  but  the  names  had 
been  borne  away  by  the  tide  that  began  its  sweep 
with  the  conquests  of  Alexander  and  reached  its 
flood  with  the  advent  of  our  Saviour.  The  Mer 
cury  to  whom  Julian  prayed  so  fervently  after  his 
conversion  was  a  far  different  character  from  the 
huckstering  God  of  Traffic  of  the  Italians,  or  even 
the  more  mystic  Guide  of  Souls  of  the  Greeks. 
Everything  is  spiritualized,  etherealized.  A  new 


THE  EMPEROR  JULIAN.  367 

significance  is  imparted  to  every  old  observance. 
A  new  light  illumes  the  beautiful  monuments  of 
Greek  poetry.  Opaque  before,  they  are  translucent 
now,  to  those  that  have  eyes  to  see ;  and  so  Homer, 
no  longer  a  master-singer  merely,  becomes  a  mystic 
oracle,  full  of  meanings  too  deep  for  unhallowed 
eyes,  of  philosophy  too  high  for  even  Plato's  reach. 
Nay,  in  their  zeal  these  allegorical  interpreters 
often  make  savage  assaults  on  the  very  man  from 
whom  the  Neoplatonists  derived  their  name  for 
banishing  Homer  from  his  ideal  republic.  Of 
course  everything  that  was  symbolical  before  be 
came  doubly  symbolical  now.  The  charge  of 
idolatry  which  the  Fathers  urged  with  so  much 
vehemence  and  persistency,  these  illuminated 
pagans  laughed  to  scorn.  '  No  wonder  ',  says  Por 
phyry,  the  most  profound  and  philosophical  among 
the  heathen  controversialists,  '  no  wonder  that  the 
ignorant  regard  the  sacred  images  of  the  gods 
as  stocks  and  stones  ;  just  as  the  unlettered  see 
nothing  in  monuments  but  stones,  in  tablets 
nothing  but  wood,  in  books  nothing  but  paper.' 
How  much  of  the  transcendental  doctrines  of  this 
mystic  school  was  due  to  the  general  Oriental  influ 
ence,  how  much  to  a  direct  incorporation  of  Chris 
tian  ideas,  we  cannot  stop  to  examine.  Enough 
that  the  system  appealed  to  all  the  elements  of 
Julian's  nature  uninformed  by  the  spirit  of  the 
Christian  faith,  although  he  had  followed  '  the  way ' 
mechanically  for  twenty  years.  We  need  not  sup 
pose  that  Julian  was  led  to  renounce  the  Christian 
religion  in  a  childish  pet,  simply  because  it  was  the 
creed  of  his  oppressor ;  or  because  of  his  disgust 


368  THE   EMPEROR  JULIAN. 

at  his  Christian  catechists ;  or  on  account  of  the 
squabbles  between  the  various  Christian  sects. 
Opposition  to  Christianity  as  such,  no  matter  in 
what  form,  has  its  source  deep  in  the  human  heart  ; 
and  the  deeper  the  heart,  the  more  earnest  the  nature, 
the  further  down  we  must  sink  the  shaft  of  our 
investigation.  Julian  was  a  thorough  Greek  in  his 
pride ;  and  the  doctrine  of  the  Cross  could  never 
have  been  other  than  foolishness  to  him. 

In  addition  to  all  this,  a  powerful  personal  influ 
ence  was  brought  to  bear  on  a  mind  already  pre 
pared  for  the  reception  of  the  mystic  doctrines  of 
the  Neo-Platonic  school.  Julian  fell  into  the  hands 
of  a  man  as  enigmatical  as  himself;  a  philosopher 
and  a  charlatan,  a  man  who  condescended  to  work 
miracles  like  Cagliostro,  and  who  showed  in  the 
midst  of  tortures  the  composure  of  a  St.  Lawrence. 
The  ascendancy  which  this  Maximus  acquired  over 
Julian's  mind  he  retained  during  all  the  memorable 
career  of  his  neophyte,  and  despite  his  insolence 
and  his  avarice,  was,  to  the  last,  a  master-spirit  in 
Julian's  eyes.  The  stories  of  the  magic  rites  into 
which  Julian  plunged  so  eagerly  have  little  interest 
except  as  so  many  illustrations  the  more  of  the 
utter  desperateness  of  the  old  religion.  The  gen 
eral  tendency  to  fantastic  superstition  had  shown 
itself  long  before,  even  in  those  early  days  when 
the  Christian  faith,  in  the  eyes  of  men,  was  only 
one  of  the  countless  foreign  religions  with  which 
Orontes  and  the  Nile  had  flooded  the  city  of  the 
Tiber.  The  astrologers,  the  magicians,  the  fortune 
tellers  and  miracle-mongers  of  all  sorts  become 
of  more  importance  for  history  as  the  old  belief 


THE  EMPEROR  JULIAN.  369 

dies  out ;  for  they  supplied  some  food  at  least  for 
the  cravings  of  the  atheistic  world;  and  many  men, 
like  Julian,  mistook  for  the  pious  impulse  which 
springs  from  conviction,  the  spurious  excitement 
which  only  over-persuades  the  dissatisfied  heart. 

And  so  Julian  became  a  convert  to  the  '  old  '  faith 
— a  faith  old  as  error,  and  so  far  '  old ' — but  so 
manipulated,  so  interpenetrated  with  foreign  ideas, 
that  Julian's  orthodoxy  would  not  pass  muster  in 
a  synod  of  heathen  priest^  of  the  best  ages.  Of 
course,  this  great  moral  catastrophe,  which  took 
place  when  he  was  twenty  years  old,  is  a  signal  for 
explosive  rhetoric.  The  Christian  fine  writer  tells 
us  that  Julian  washed  off  the  sacred  stream  of  bap 
tism  with  the  impure  blood  of  his  sacrifices ;  the 
heathen  fine  writer  tells  us  that  he  washed  off  the 
salt  water  of  the  Christian  doctrine  with  the  pure 
spring-water  of  true  philosophy ;  and  neither  Gre 
gory  nor  Libanius  would  have  had  it  otherwise,  for 
neither  of  them  would  have  lost  a  figure  of  speech 
or  a  Platonic  reminiscence  for  a  kingdom.  A  hollow 
age  at  best ;  and  hence,  doubtless,  the  mild  judgment 
of  so  many  in  this  day  on  the  few  who  in  that  day 
really  meant  what  they  said.  Julian's  conversion  was 
a  secret  that  every  one  knew  who  cared  to  know. 

Gallus,  it  is  said,  heard  the  report,  and  manifested 
great  distress  at  the  lapse  of  his  brother ;  and  we 
find  that,  although  Julian  conformed  to  the  external 
observance  of  the  Christian  religion  for  nine  long 
years  afterward,  and  practised  his  heathen  rites  in 
private  only,  his  personal  opinions  were  generally 
known. 

It  might  seem  strange  that  Constantius  did  not 


370  THE   EMPEROR  JULIAN. 

interfere ;  but  doubtless  in  the  plenitude  of  his  self- 
conceit  he  despised  the  dreaming  boy,  and  after 
wards,  when  the  dreamer  became  Caesar,  interference 
would  have  become  dangerous,  and  he  contented 
himself  with  sundry  spiteful  edicts  against  apostates, 
some  of  which  Julian  himself  was  forced  to  sign. 

At  this  stage  he  interposed  only  to  forbid  his 
attendance  on  the  lectures  of  Libanius,  a  super- 
elegant  sounding-board  of  a  man,  who  was  regarded 
as  a  prodigy  in  those  d#ys,  and  finds  admirers  of 
his  style  even  now.  And  yet  whips  could  hardly 
force  most  men  of  our  generation  to  read  Libanius 
except  for  Julian's  sake;  and  Julian's  own  writings 
have  a  pith  and  marrow  denied  to  the  compositions 
of  the  shallow  rhetorician,  whose  lectures  his  in 
fatuated  admirer  managed  to  study,  despite  the 
Emperor's  prohibition,  in  the  form  of  manuscript 
notes.  But  all  such  evasions  have  a  deleterious  effect 
on  the  character ;  and  even  the  most  transparent 
disguise  is  a  degradation  to  a  man. 

In  an  elaborate  defence  of  his  course,  which  he 
addressed  with  a  characteristic  anachronism  to  the 
senate  and  people  of  Athens,  Julian  represents  his 
whole  line  of  conduct  toward  Constantius  as  a  well- 
considered  plan  to  escape  death  that  he  might  serve 
the  gods.  In  that  sophistic  age  and  under  those 
sophistic  influences  we  cannot  wonder  that  he 
thought  the  crown  of  the  Caesars  cheaply  bought 
by  servile  flattery  and  fawning;  in  that  age — nay, 
in  what  age  ? 

A  document  of  this  policy  of  self-abasement 
remains  in  a  grand  oration  by  Julian  in  honor  of 
Constantius ;  and  the  author  doubtless  gloried  in 


THE  EMPEROR   JULIAN.  3/1 

the  elaboration  of  so  fine  an  essay  on  so  mean  a 
subject.  A  modern  in  like  circumstances  would 
have  destroyed  the  memento  of  his  own  humiliation, 
but  Julian  was  too  much  of  a  rhetorician  to  throw 
away  so  pretty  a  piece  of  work. 

While  one  brother  was  finding  his  way  back  to 
the  fold  of  the  old  religion,  the  other,  a  devoted 
adherent  of  the  new  faith,  was  trying  his  hand  on  the 
work  of  government.  His  fierce  nature  was  linked 
to  one  scarcely  less  fierce,  in  the  person  of  his  wife 
Constantia ;  and  this  royal  pair  ranged  their  domain 
for  victims  of  their  insatiable  hunger.  Constantius 
watched  with  concern  this  growing  appetite,  and 
fearing  lest  the  next  lordly  dish  should  be  himself, 
entrapped  the  handsome  wild  beast,  who  was  as  dull 
as  he  was  cruel,  and  put  him  to  death  like  a  com 
mon  malefactor  in  354.  '  So  perished  Callus,'  says 
the  historian  of  the  times,  '  by  an  untimely  death, 
and  weary  of  himself  in  his  twenty-ninth  year.'  A 
fearful  epitaph :  weary  of  himself  in  his  twenty-ninth 
year ! ' — an  epitaph  which  foolish  young  men  may 
covet,  but  none  other.  The  death  of  Callus  made 
Julian  the  heir-apparent  to  the  imperial  throne,  and 
from  that  time  forth  his  course  became  more  difficult. 
To  arouse  suspicion  was  to  invoke  his  doom  ;  and 
his  conduct  had  already  given  rise  to  the  gravest 
doubts  in  the  mind  of  the  Emperor.  Contrary  to 
orders,  he  had  gone  to  meet  his  brother  Callus ; 
and  those  who  were  parties  to  the  murder  were 
eager  to  remove  the  future  avenger  of  blood.  Julian 
was  summoned  from  his  literary  studies  and  his 
magical  rites,  to  the  imperial  court  at  Milan. 
Surrounded  by  spies  and  enemies,  ridiculed  for  his 


3/2  THE   EMPEROR  JULIAN. 

awkward  demeanor,  forced  to  suppress  his  mental 
agony,  forced  to  bow  before  the  murderer  of  his  father 
and  his  brother,  Julian's  life  at  court  must  have  been 
a  hideous  torture.  But  even  here  he  found  a  friend 
— the  beautiful  and  intellectual  Eusebia,  the  wife  of 
the  Emperor.  The  pent-up  tenderness  of  her  heart, 
which  found  no  sympathy  in  the  cold  nature  of 
Constantius  and  yearned  in  vain  for  children,  took 
its  course  toward  the  young  kinsman.  Her  love 
for  Julian  was  lofty  and  pure;  that  it  was  selfish 
even  to  jealousy  seems  not  improbable ;  but  that  it 
ever  led  her  to  the  crime  of  tampering  with  the  health 
of  Julian's  wife  is  a  monstrous  conjecture  which 
few  consent  to  entertain.  Eusebia's  affection  was 
returned  by  Julian,  and  his  praises  of  her,  which  are 
still  on  record,  came  from  the  heart.  She  pleaded  his 
cause  with  the  Emperor,  she  obtained  pardon  for 
his  disobedience,  and  gave  him — in  her  fellow-feeling 
with  his  passion  for  reading — a  handsome  collec 
tion  of  books.  But  Julian  did  not  remain  long  at 
Milan  to  endure  the  mockery  of  the  courtiers  or  to 
receive  the  consolations  of  Eusebia.  His  life  was 
not  safe  there,  surrounded  as  he  was  by  men  whose 
interest  lay  in  destroying  him,  and  he  was  removed 
to  the  village  of  Como,  where  he  remained  in  honor 
able  captivity  for  six  months.  At  last,  by  the 
intercession  of  Eusebia,  he  was  set  free  and  obtained 
permission  to  prosecute  his  studies  at  Athens. 

At  Athens  Julian  was  in  a  congenial  atmosphere. 
He  was  a  bookman  from  head  to  foot.  He  prided 
himself  on  his  inky  nails ;  he  boasted  that  he  had 
read  as  much  as  any  one  of  his  age.  In  him  the 
bookworm  never  dies.  He  gives  away  a  pretty 


THE   EMPEROR  JULIAN.  373 

little  farm,  and  in  an  exquisite  description  of  the 
view  which  it  commands,  he  does  not  forget  to 
mention  how  the  prospect  will  refresh  the  eye  in  the 
intervals  of  studying  books.  He  chides  the  Alex 
andrians  severely  for  their  murder  of  George — 
perhaps  secretly  pleased  at  such  an  occasion  for 
eloquence — but  in  his  righteous  indignation  he  does 
not  forget  George's  books;  and  the  prefect  of 
Egypt  is  especially  charged  to  get  those  books,  for 
'  some  love  horses,  and  some  love  birds,  and  some 
love  wild  animals,  but  I  of  a  little  boy  have  had  an 
ingrained  weakness  for  books.  Get  them  all — 
Galilaean  and  all.  Let  George's  notary  go  scot-free, 
if  he  tracks  out  the  books.  If  he  play  the  rascal  and 
find  them  not — to  the  torture  with  him.'  Quocunque 
modo — books.  Ah  !  deep  is  the  significance  of  those 
lines  by  one  of  the  world's '  illustrious  ignoramuses  ' : 

Study  is  like  the  heaven's  glorious  sun 
That  will  not  be  deep  searched  by  saucy  looks ; 
Small  have  continual  plodders  ever  won, 
Save  base  authority,  from  others'  books. 

And  not  only  did  he  love  books,  but  his  language 
was  book  language.  His  Greek  is  too  artificial,  too 
reminiscential.  His  prodigious  memory  seems  to 
have  held  in  solution  all  Plato ;  and  his  reading 
precipitated  itself  upon  his  thinking,  so  that  his  style 
resembles  the  seamed  and  cracking  paint  on  the 
face  of  some  excitable  old  belle.  His  pedantry  is 
undeniable.  He  is  as  full  of  saws  and  proverbs  as 
Sancho  Panza ;  as  full  of  literary  geography  as  fifth- 
rate  scribblers.  Sensible  people  now-a-days  say 
Shakespeare  and  not  the  '  Bard  of  Avon  ';  Dante, 


374  THE  EMPEROR   JULIAN. 

and  not  the  '  Poet-Exile  of  Florence ';  but  if  Julian 
were  so  unfortunate  as  to  be  alive  now,  he  would 
call  Boker  'the  Bard  of  Philadelphia',  and  Walt 
Whitman  'the  Yawper  of  Washington  ',  just  as  he 
calls  Callimachus  the  Poet  of  Cyrene,  and  Herod 
otus  the  Thurian  Historian.  Even  his  best  letters 
are  disfigured  by  allusions.  A  very  pretty  note  of 
consolation — cold  heathen  comfort  at  best — is  iced 
by  the  sleeping  draught  which  Helen  prepared  for 
Telemachus  in  the  Odyssey.  He  sends  some  dried 
Damascus  figs  to  a  friend — only  a  miserable  hundred 
— and  makes  up  for  the  meagreness  of  the  gift  by 
the  bulkiness  of  his  eulogy  on  figs,  wherein  he 
proves  very  satisfactorily  by  Aristophanes,  Herodotus 
and  Homer,  that  figs  are  sweet;  by  Hippocrates, 
that  they  are  readily  digested  ;  by  Theophrastus,  that 
they  are  easy  to  graft  on ;  by  Aristotle,  that  they 
are  a  preventive  of  poison ;  until  we  are  fain  to  cry 
out — a  fig  for  Aristophanes,  Herodotus  and  com 
pany  !  and  do  not  stop  to  read  his  ingenious  praise 
of  the  number  100,  which  he  shows  to  be  a  most 
excellent  number,  by  the  testimony  of  Homer  and 
Pindar  and  Simonides  and  the  rest  of  them.  He 
goes  into  a  garden,  a  respectable  garden,  but  instead 
of  saying  that  it  is  a  respectable  garden,  he  says 
that  it  is  more  like  the  garden  of  Laertes  than 
the  garden  of  Alcinous.  Anywhere  you  can  find 
an  admirable  compendium  of  Greek  literature  and 
mythology.  So  he  has  crammed  into  a  letter  of 
some  fifty  lines,  I.  Ulysses;  2.  Telemachus;  3. 
Pindar;  4.  Democritus ;  5.  Orpheus;  6.  Argus  ;  7. 
Proteus;  8.  ^Esculapius;  9.  Homer;  10.  Jupiter 
Servator;  II.  Hermes  Logios ;  12.  Plato,  and  13. 


THE   EMPEROR  JULIAN.  375 

Socrates.  Nor  is  he  pedantic  only.  A  large  part 
of  his  letters  are  addressed  to  sophists,  as  one 
should  say,  professors ;  and  in  these  he  exults  and 
abounds  in  affectations  and  extravagances  of  all 
sorts.  Such  compliments !  such  exclamations ! 
'  O  speech  !  O  genius  !  O  intellect !  O  distribu 
tion  !  O  argument !  O  arrangement !  O  introduc 
tion  !  O  language  !  O  harmony  !  O  composition  ! ' 
O  Gemini !  O  Julian  !  His  letters  to  lamblichus 
are  almost  furibund  in  their  enthusiasm.1  'As 
soon  as  I  recognized  Sopater,  I  jumped  up  and 
made  for  him  and  threw  my  arms  round  his  neck 
and  wept  for  joy,  for  I  knew  he  had  a  letter  for  me 
from  you.  And  when  I  got  it,  I  kissed  it  and 
put  it  up  to  my  eyes,  and  I  held  on  to  it  like  grim 
death,  fearing,  as  it  were,  that  while  I  was  reading  it, 
your  dear  image  would  flit  from  my  soul ' — and  the 
rest  of  it.  '  I  would  rather  receive  one  letter  from 
lamblichus  than  all  the  gold  of  Lydia.'  '  I  should 
like  to  pin  myself  to  your  shirt,  and  never — no — 
never  desert  my  lamblichus.'  But  fine  writing  was 
the  disease  of  the  age;  and  it  is  no  little  to  Julian's 
credit  that  there  is  so  much  sense  even  in  his  most 
ornate  flourishes,  and  that  we  find  in  his  works  so 
goodly  a  number  of  simple,  unaffected  passages.  His 
rhetorical  letters  are  his  worst  compositions  by  far  ; 
and  if  he  could  have  foreseen  what  a  handle  would 
be  made  of  some  of  his  figures  of  speech,  the  number 
of  those  simple,  unaffected  passages  would  have 
been  greatly  increased,  to  the  relief  of  his  readers 
and  the  benefit  of  his  own  reputation.  For  instance, 

1  The  genuineness  of  Julian's  letters  to  lamblichus  has  been 
vigorously  attacked  of  late. — B.  L.  G. 


THE  EMPEROR  JULIAN. 

in  that  extravagant  letter  to  lamblichus  there  is  a 
sentence  which  has  given  the  enemies  of  Julian 
abundant  occasion  to  blaspheme.  It  runs,  '  When 
the  foster-father  of  my  babies  came  home  again,  I 
began  another  letter  to  you ';  and  we  must  confess 
that  such  an  expression  as  '  the  foster-father  of  my 
babies '  looks  very  ugly  for  a  man  who  had  no 
children  by  his  wife,  and  whose  chastity  was  the 
admiration  of  his  age.  The  plea  has  been  set  up 
that  this  foster-father  or  keeper  of  his  babies  was  his 
confidential  secretary,  and  that  his  babies  were  the 
children  of  his  brain ;  and  though  Dr.  Auer  rejects 
the  interpretation  as  revolting  to  common  sense,  we 
cannot  but  think  that  it  is  very  much  in  consonance 
with  the  cheap  rhetoric  of  that  time  and  of  all  time. 
Who  started  the  figure  it  is  impossible  to  tell.  It 
is  found  in  Aristophanes,  who  compares  his  first 
comedies  with  love-children ;  it  is  found  in  Plato  ; 
and  that  this  very  expression  of  Julian's  was  con 
sidered  a  very  dainty  one  is  shown  by  a  spurious 
letter  in  which  it  recurs.  Surely  the  trope  is  not 
dead  even  now,  as  many  '  prolific  pens  '  and  '  teem 
ing  brains'  testify  to  the  present  day.  Julian  was 
the  very  man  to  speak  of  his  books  and  scriptiun- 
culae  of  all  sorts  in  that  affectionate  vein ;  and  we 
seem  to  hear  him  say,  in  the  words  of  Euripides — 
read  backward  by  Madame  Cornelia  Gracchi — 

'  These  be  my  treasures  in  the  stead  of  puling  brats.'1 

And,  what  is  singularly  to  the  point,  Julian's  friend 

1  This  is  a  Montaignesque  perversion  of  Heracleidae  591  : 
rdd  avrl  Traldav  fori  IJLOL  Ket/zqXia,  for  which  I  desire  to  make 
atonement  by  anything  short  of  giving  it  up. — B.  L.  G. 


THE   EMPEROR  JULIAN.  377 

and  eulogist  and  idol,  Libanius,  speaks  of  him  as 
the  '  father  of  many  discourses  '. 

But,  for  fear  of  losing  ourselves  in  the  detailed 
discussion  of  Julian  the  author,  let  us  turn  again  to 
Julian  the  man,  and  see  whether  we  can  recall  the 
image  of  him  as  he  lived  and  moved  before  the  eyes 
of  the  world.  There  is  no  lack  of  material.  We 
have  numerous  coins  of  his  vice-regency  and  of 
his  reign,  and  three  pen-and-ink  sketches,  one  by 
himself,  one  by  an  admirer,  one  by  an  old  school 
fellow  and  enemy.  The  coins — at  least  as  figured 
in  the  books  to  which  we  have  access — are  puzzling. 
On  one,  his  head  is  long  and  narrow ;  on  another, 
full  and  broad.  On  one,  his  nose  is  thin  and 
straight ;  on  another,  massive  and  crooked.  Spirit 
and  expression  are  sought  in  vain.  The  profile  of 
the  heathen  Emperor  glares  as  vacantly  at  nothing, 
as  the  image  of  any  of  the  Georges,  or  the  death-in- 
life  of  an  old-fashioned  daguerreotype.  If  we  turn 
from  the  coins  to  the  descriptions,  we  find  that 
while  the  general  likeness  is  preserved,  the  expres 
sion  is  changed  according  to  the  temper  of  the 
author.  Of  least  value  is  Julian's  own  description — 
an  affected  caricature  of  himself— in  which  he  talks 
about  his  beard,  as  if  it  were  a  new  thing  with  him. 
The  beard  was  the  badge  of  the  Greek  and  of  the 
philosopher.  As  such,  it  was  worn  by  Hadrian 
with  the  unphilosophic  side-motive  of  hiding  his 
warty  face ;  as  such,  it  was  worn  by  Julian.  Lu- 
cian,  the  great  jester  of  antiquity,  abounds  in  jeers 
at  the  immense  volumes  of  hair  which  the  would-be 
wise  of  his  day  thought  it  necessary  to  lug  about 
with  them  in  attestation  of  their  sapience;  and 


3/8  THE   EMPEROR  JULIAN. 

Julian's  satirical  pamphlet,  in  which  his  self-carica 
ture  is  found,  bears  the  title  of  '  Misopogon '  or 
'  Beard-hater '.  To  begin,  then,  as  Julian  himself 
would  have  had  us  begin,  with  the  insignia  of  his 
philosophic  rank,  Julian's  beard  was  coarse  and 
shaggy,  but  his  hair  was  singularly  fine  ;  his  nose 
was  straight,  but  his  nostrils  were  wide ;  his  eyes 
were  of  piercing  brilliancy,  but  restless,  uneasy; 
his  face  was  intellectual,  but  his  lower  lip  hung 
down,  and  his  mouth  was  distorted  by  extravagant 
grimaces ;  his  neck  was  massive,  but  it  rolled 
disjointedly  from  side  to  side;  his  shoulders  were 
broad  and  muscular,  but  they  shrugged  perpetually ; 
his  trunk  was  well  proportioned,  but  his  stature 
was  low,  his  feet  unsteady  and  his  knees  knocked. 
His  voice  was  bad,  his  enunciation  interrupted  by 
gasps  for  breath,  his  speech  confused  and  nervous, 
his  words  tumbled  over  one  another,  his  sentences 
were  half-finished,  his  questions  contradictory.  In 
this  description,  which  combines  the  portraits 
drawn  by  the  Christian  bishop  and  the  heathen  his 
torian,  the  irregular  character  of  Julian  is  singularly 
reflected ;  the  union  of  vigor  with  weakness,  soft 
ness  with  coarseness,  beauty  with  ugliness.  His 
body  lacked  grace  as  his  mind  lacked  poetry. 
There  is  something  hard  and  cold  in  most  of  his 
writings,  as  there  was  something  angular  and 
constrained  i  n  most  of  his  actions.  A  creature  of 
contrasts,  without  such  balancing  he  cannot  be 
represented;  with  all  this  balancing,  how  can  he 
be  understood  ? 

In  the  autumn  of  the  year  in  which  he  went  to 
Athens  (355)  Julian  was  recalled  to  Milan.     The 


THE   EMPEROR  JULIAN.  3/9 

condition  of  the  western  portion  of  the  Empire 
was  critical ;  the  Germans  had  risen  in  arms ;  the 
presence  of  some  higher  personage  than  a  mere 
general  was  deemed  necessary  ;  Eusebia  advocated 
with  feminine  tact  the  elevation  of  Julian,  and 
Constantius  proclaimed  his  cousin  Csesar.  At  the 
same  time,  in  pursuance  of  a  fatuous  policy  which 
is  as  perennial  as  stupidity  itself,  he  endeavored 
to  bind  Julian  to  the  throne  by  the  marriage -tie 
and  presented  him  with  a  wife.  The  bride  selected 
was  the  Emperor's  sister  Helena,  a  maiden  lady 
somewhat  older  than  her  bridegroom.  The  mar 
riage  was  not  a  very  happy  one;  Julian's  nature 
was  rhetorical  rather  than  poetical,  and  he  had  too 
little  creative  imagination  to  appreciate  the  charms 
of  the  smaller  sex ;  and  his  wife  bore  him  no 
living  child,  and  seems  to  have  spent  a  large 
portion  of  her  time  away  from  him  at  court  in 
Milan.  Julian  accepted  his  bride  philosophically; 
not  so  the  Caesarship.  When  he  assumed  the 
purple,  the  Homeric  oracle  gave  the  ominous  re 
sponse: 

'  Seized  by  impurpled  death  and  the  grasp  of  a  violent  Dooms 
day  ';! 

and  at  every  stage  of  his  journey  toward  his  new 
destination  he  heard  fresh  tidings  of  misfortune ; 
and  the  fear  began  to  grow  strong  within  him  that 
he  had  been  sent  to  meet  his  death.  But  after  all  it 
was  in  Gaul  and  Germany  that  he  acquired  his  best 
titles  to  greatness.  As  first  his  want  of  experience 
forced  him  to  confine  himself  to  a  subordinate 

1 II.  xvi.  334  :  eXXa/3e  vropffivpfos  da.va.Tos  /cat  polpa  Kparairj. 


380  THE  EMPEROR  JULIAN. 

position  in  the  council  of  war,  but  he  worked  his 
way  up  by  assiduous  study  and  constant  practice 
to  the  front  rank.  It  is  not  the  man  of  routine 
that  succeeds  best  as  a  general ;  and  when  grand 
combinations  are  necessary,  native  genius  tells. 
Julian's  bravery  is  unquestioned.  Why  should 
anything  so  common  be  so  often  questioned  ?  The 
type  of  it  was  that  of  a  Prince  Eugene  rather  than 
that  of  a  Marlborough;  or  still  better,  it  was  the 
student  type,  so  terrible  because  inspired  by  such 
exalted  models.  One  property  of  a  great  com 
mander  he  possessed  in  an  eminent  degree.  His 
military  movements  were  as  rapid  as  thought,  and 
his  combinations  were  carried  out  with  a  speed  that 
stupefied  the  rebellious  barbarians.  A  reputed 
dreamer,  he  showed  by  his  minute  attention  to  the 
details  of  the  service  that  he  understood  the  impor 
tance  of  thorough  discipline,  and  the  unpractical 
scholar  became  a  first-class  drill-sergeant.  Nor 
was  he  less  respected  among  the  people  he  was 
sent  to  govern  than  among  those  he  was  sent  to 
subdue ;  and  in  after  days  he  used  to  sigh  for  his 
Kelts  and  his  Germans,  who  made  his  name  great, 
who  were  not  offended  at  his  eccentricities,  who 
valued  him  for  what  he  was.  His  Kelts  and  Ger 
mans  indeed !  Depend  upon  it,  such  a  love  of 
savages  means  nothing  more  than  a  hate  of  one's 
own  people,  or,  at  best,  a  factitious  admiration  of 
primitive  culture,  such  as  literary  gentlemen  have 
always  had  a  way  of  getting  up.  So,  for  instance, 
Thucydides  pets  the  Scythians,  Tacitus  extols  the 
Germans,  Chateaubriand  admires  the  red  man,  and 
Charles  Sumner  stalks  on  his  rhetorical  stilts  at  the 


THE  EMPEROR  JULIAN.  381 

head  of  the  procession  to  the  shrine  of  Sambo. 
Julian's  longing  for  his  Kelts  and  his  Germans  was 
purely  rhetorical. 

His  mode  of  life  was  simple  to  ostentation,  and 
he  has  himself  trumpeted  his  hard  couch,  his  cold 
room,  his  negligent  attire,  his  vegetable  diet.  But 
he  has  left  to  others  the  praise  of  his  real  virtues. 
True,  those  virtues  were  not  spontaneous — what 
virtues  are? — and  like  all  his  fine  qualities  seem 
to  be  studied  ;  but  the  chastity  of  his  life  and  his 
ardent  love  of  justice  ought  to  receive  their  due 
meed  of  praise,  though  the  one  has  been  assailed 
and  the  other  was  at  times  beclouded.  '  Who  shall 
be  punished,  if  it  be  enough  to  deny  ? '  asked  an 
impatient  prosecutor.  '  Who  shall  escape,  if  it  be 
enough  to  accuse  ? '  replied  Julian.  But  Julian's 
popularity  in  the  army  was  due  not  only  to  his 
justice,  but  to  his  beneficence.  In  his  blindness,  he 
could  see  but  few  good  points  in  the  madness  of  the 
Galilseans,  and  among  those  were  their  charity  and 
hospitality,  which  he  emulated  himself  and  desired 
his  followers  to  emulate.  He  watched  over  his 
soldiers  as  if  they  had  been  his  children,  and  they 
loved  him  as  a  father.  How  much  popularity- 
hunting,  how  much  insincerity  there  was  in  all  this, 
we  shall  not  undertake  to  say :  our  best  qualities 
do  not  bear  analysis,  and  if  it  is  charged  that 
Julian  prided  himself  on  tinsel  virtues  as  the  Byzan 
tine  emperors  prided  themselves  on  their  gilt-paper 
money,  we  can  only  answer  that  all  spiritual  pride 
does  its  banking  business  on  a  fictitious  capital. 

Julian  acquitted  himself  well  of  the  task  imposed 
on  him,  and  at  the  same  time  managed  to  avoid 


382  THE   EMPEROR  JULIAN. 

giving  any  cause  of  complaint  to  the  jealous  and 
exacting  Emperor.  He  bent  his  impatient  soul  to 
the  duty  of  reporting  plans  and  awaiting  instruc 
tions.  His  most  brilliant  successes  were  attributed 
to  the  genius  of  the  Emperor  and  the  good  fortune 
of  the  Caesar,  and  the  assassin  and  the  spy  dogged 
him  throughout  his  career.  Can  we  wonder  that 
his  activity  under  all  this  constraint  was  feverish, 
that  the  flush  of  victory  was  the  flush  of  disease  ? 
Angry  with  himself  at  his  miscalculation  of  Julian's 
powers,  and  incensed  with  Julian  for  presuming  to 
be  successful,  Constantius  endeavored,  in  accord 
ance  with  the  tortuous  policy  of  the  age,  to  injure 
his  viceroy  through  the  army.  He  withheld  the 
rewards  for  which  Julian  had  pledged  himself,  he 
impeded  promotions  that  had  been  promised,  and 
finally  ordered  off  to  the  East  a  large  portion  of  the 
forces  that  had  enlisted  under  Julian's  assurances  to 
serve  only  in  the  West.  The  soldiers  were  indig 
nant  and  showed  signs  of  rebellion.  Julian  urged 
them  to  remain  true  to  their  duty.  Was  he  honest 
in  his  endeavor,  or  did  he  incite  the  mutiny  which 
he  tried  to  quell  ?  At  all  events,  only  a  part 
obeyed  his  orders ;  the  rest  revolted  and  proclaimed 
Julian  Emperor.  This  memorable  event  took  place 
in  the  winter  of  360-1,  in  Julian's  dear  little  town 
of  Paris,  of  which  he  has  given  us  a  description,  of 
a  simplicity  that  is  charming,  even  if  it  be  affected. 
It  is  built,  he  tells  us,  on  a  modest  island  in  the 
river  Seine,  and  connected  with  the  opposite  shores 
by  wooden  bridges.  An  equable  stream,  that  river 
Seine,  flowing  summer  and  winter  without  much 
change.  Its  water  is  clear  and  sweet,  and  the 


THE   EMPEROR  JULIAN.  383 

simple  inhabitants  use  it  as  their  beverage.  The 
climate  is  mild  and  pleasant ;  good  grapes  grow  on 
the  islet,  and  some  luxurious  people  have  intro 
duced  fig-trees,  which  they  protect  by  matting  from 
the  winter's  cold.  This  was  Julian's  darling  Lu- 
tetia — how  changed  at  present  we  need  not  say ; 
changed  but  not  ungrateful :  and  many  of  our 
readers  have  doubtless  stood  in  the  Thermes  de 
Julien  and  tried  to  reproduce  that  stormy  scene, 
when  armed  men  surrounded  the  palace  and  called 
forth  their  general.  All  night  long  the  clashing  of 
arms  and  the  hoarse  cries  of  the  soldiery  roared 
round  those  walls,  and  there  toward  the  break  of 
day  the  last  of  the  famous  line  of  Constantius 
Chlorus  was  proclaimed  Emperor.  We  do  not 
pretend  to  say  that  Julian  was  entirely  guiltless  of 
this  sedition.  The  conventional  signs  of  reluctance 
to  accept  the  diadem  prove  nothing;  but  we  must 
consider  that  the  chances  were  against  him,  and 
that  the  outbreak  of  the  plot  was  premature ;  unless 
indeed  we  accept  the  baseless  suggestion  that 
Julian  had  made  his  preparations  to  remove  Con 
stantius  by  poison.  At  all  events,  the  step  once  taken 
there  was  no  retreat.  The  fate  of  his  father  and 
his  brother  warned  him  that  no  mercy  was  to  be 
expected  except  such  strained  mercy  as  fear  might 
extort,  and  Julian's  confidence  increased  with  his 
strength.  At  first  he  behaved  modestly  and  made 
modest  claims,  but  Constantius  rejected  his  pro 
posals  with  indignation,  and  prepared  to  return 
from  the  East  and  crush  the  rebel  in  person.  Open 
war  was  declared.  Julian  met  with  little  resistance 
in  his  southward  progress,  but  suddenly  changed 


384  THE   EMPEROR  JULIAN. 

his  course  and  struck  across,  by  a  bold  march,  to  the 
banks  of  the  Danube,  and  effected  a  junction  with  his 
lieutenants  at  Sirmium  in  Dacia.  Here  he  lingered 
irresolute ;  the  great  captain,  philosopher,  and  pro 
fessor,  parleying  with  the  messengers  of  Constan- 
tius,  writing  elegant  essays  to  dead  nationalities, 
and  consulting  the  augurs  and  the  soothsayers. 
Surely  Constantius,  who  pretended  at  least  that  the 
war  was  nothing  but  a  hunting  party,  must  have 
congratulated  himself  on  finding  his  game  at  bay  ; 
and  for  our  part  we  have  little  doubt  of  the  issue 
of  the  struggle.  Julian  was  lost,  had  not  the 
Emperor  suddenly  sickened  and  died  in  Cilicia.  Of 
course,  Julian  succeeded  without  resistance  to  the 
throne,  and  the  amazed  inhabitants  went  out  to 
meet  their  Emperor,  '  who  had  dropped  down  upon 
them,  as  it  were,  from  the  skies  '.  His  arrival  pro 
duced  no  little  consternation  among  his  adversaries  ; 
and  well  it  might,  for  he  made  the  weight  of  his 
hand  felt,  and  several  of  his  own  enemies,  and  of 
the  murderers  of  his  brother,  were  sent  into  exile, 
two  burnt  alive — none  much  regretted  by  the  world 
except  one,  '  over  whose  fate  Justice  herself  is 
supposed  to  have  wept'.  Julian  declared  that  he 
was  not  chargeable  with  that  crime,  and  historians 
believe  him  or  not,  according  to  their  prejudice. 

But  more  terrible  in  the  eyes  of  the  people 
than  any  possible  massacre  of  innocents  was  the 
onslaught  which  Julian  made  on  the  household 
of  the  palace.  The  court  of  Constantinople  had 
followed  the  Oriental  fashion  of  employing,  or  pre 
tending  to  employ,  a  host  of  officers  ;  and  Julian 
decapitated — as  we  say  in  our  sanguinary  political 


THE  EMPEROR  JULIAN.  385 

slang — his  thousands  of  barbers  and  his  tens  of 
thousands  of  cooks.  Small  need  had  the  unshorn 
Emperor  of  artists  in  hair,  or  the  distinguished 
vegetarian,  of  Byzantine  Soyers.  His  simple  couch 
required  no  careful  attendance;  his  attire  was 
plain,  his  use  of  water  limited ;  and  so  he  sent 
packing  Grooms  of  the  Stole  and  Keepers  of  the 
Imperial  Umbrella,  Gentlemen  of  the  Bed-chamber 
and  Lords  of  the  Wash-basin.  Did  he  dream  that 
he  had  put  an  end  to  the  follies  of  the  court  show  ? 
Short-sighted  reformer  !  The  Imperial  scullion  and 
Imperial  bootblack  survived  the  Byzantine  Em 
pire,  and  the  faint  shadows  of  those  absurd  titles 
still  live;  or  did  we  read  only  in  a  vision  the 
appointment  of  an  Upper  Court-Chimney-sweep  to 
His  Majesty  of  Prussia?  Short-sighted  reformer 
again,  if  he  thought  that  even  his  own  world  was  to 
be  changed  by  his  example.  He  had  only  shorn 
himself  of  his  majesty  by  not  shaving  off  his  beard, 
and  made  enemies  of  the  hirelings  who  had  been 
such  an  ornament  to  the  court  and  such  a  satisfac 
tion  to  themselves.  And  the  pets  who  took  their 
place  were  not  comely  to  look  upon.  Long- 
bearded  philosophers  of  more  than  dubious  cleanli 
ness,  haughty  magicians,  pretentious  soothsayers, 
babbling  rhetoricians,  rushed  in  to  fill  the  void  ; 
and  there  was  the  Emperor,  trying  to  outdo  them 
all,  philosophizing  with  the  philosophers,  puzzling 
the  magicians,  taking  first-class  diplomas  in  the  art 
of  divination,  and  pitting  his  Imperial  self  against  a 
regiment  of  shallow  praters.  Verily  Constantius 
had  a  more  royal  presence  ;  he,  who  never  moved 
a  muscle  of  his  closely-shaven  face,  who  never 


386  THE   EMPEROR  JULIAN. 

forgot  his  dignity,  but  clothed  himself  with  it  as 
with  a  garment.  What  a  contrast  to  this  hairy, 
frisking,  jabbering  prince,  with  his  lolling  head  and 
his  snorting  nose,  his  frantic  gestures  and  his  odd 
grimaces,  sputtering  and  stammering,  blurting  out 
witticism  after  witticism — now  a  sublime  sentence, 
now  a  wretched  pun  !  The  proprieties,  whose  name  is 
legion, fled  aghast  before  this  monstrous  innovator; 
and  imagination  alone  can  tell  us  how  many  old- 
fashioned  courtiers  sickened  and  died  of 'the  Julian  V 
The  time  was  come  to  drop  the  transparent 
mask,  and  Julian  proclaimed  himself  a  heathen. 
The  Christian  religion  ceased  to  be  the  religion  of 
the  state,  and  the  privileges  secured  to  its  ministers 
were  forfeited.  In  a  despotism  in  which  Church  and 
State  are  united,  the  faith  of  the  monarch  is  the  faith 
of  the  Empire ;  and  Julian's  antagonism  to  Chris 
tianity  was  strengthened  by  his  position  as  absolute 
ruler.  Or  rather,  having  long  believed  that  he  had 
been  chosen  by  the  gods  as  the  great  restorer  of 
their  worship,  he  entered  with  zeal  upon  his  mis 
sionary  work.  The  Roman  Empire  was  his  idol. 
He  desired  to  maintain  the  integrity  of  its  traditions 
and  the  unity  of  its  religion ;  and  a  struggle  with 
the  Christian  element  was  inevitable.  Other  forms 
of  faith  were  less  exacting,  less  intolerant.  The 
various  creeds  of  Oriental  paganism  fell  readily 
into  the  ranks  of  the  Greek  system,  which  opened 
wide  to  receive  all  comers.  Even  the  chosen  people 
showed  an  elasticity  in  adapting  themselves  to  the 
pressure  of  the  times,  and,  while  they  did  not  yield 
their  faith,  were  content  with  a  recognition  of  the 

1  *  God  help  the  noble  Claudio  !  if  he  have  caught  the  Bene 
dick,  it  will  cost  him  a  thousand  pound  ere  he  be  cured.' 


THE   EMPEROR  JULIAN.  387 

claims  of  their  great  prophet  Not  so  the  followers 
of  'the  Galilaean  ',  '  the  dead  Jew'.  As  Calvin  says, 
Christum  dimidium  quisquis  habere  vult,  totum 
perdit.  No  statue  for  him  by  the  side  of  any  other. 
He  must  reign  alone :  and  so  there  arose  in  the 
heart  of  Julian  a  feeling  of  personal  enmity  to  the 
Saviour,  which  exhibits  itself  not  only  in  the  use 
of  such  names  as  we  have  cited  with  natural 
reluctance,  but  even  more  strikingly  in  the  studied 
avoidance  of  the  common  appellation  which  must 
have  been  so  often  on  his  lips  as  a  catechumen.  A 
signal  exemplification  of  this  feeling  of  hostility  is 
found  in  His  intentional  petting  of  the  Jews,  whom 
he  openly  favored  on  every  occasion  as  the  profes 
sors  of  the  older  and  purer  creed  of  which  Christi 
anity  was  only  a  corrupt  form.  Hence  his  famous 
attempt  to  restore  the  Temple  of  Jerusalem,  which 
was  defeated,  as  is  said,  by  elemental  disturbances. 
We  do  not  pretend  to  decide  whether  the  balls  of 
fire  which  burst  from  the  foundation  were  due  to 
accident  or  to  trickery.  The  result  is  certain  that 
the  work  was  soon  stopped  ;  but  we  cannot  triumph 
over  that  result  as  the  vindication  of  prophecy, 
simply  because  there  is  no  prophecy  to  be  vindi 
cated.  Julian  may  have  had— most  probably  did 
have — the  design  of  glorifying  himself  by  such  a 
monument  of  his  reign ;  he  could  not  have  had  the 
design  of  glorifying  himself  by  refuting  a  prophecy 
which  was  never  made,  for  the  words  of  our 
Saviour  refer  only  to  the  destruction  of  the  temple, 
and  nothing  is  said  of  the  restoration. 

Julian  took  his  duties  as  the  supreme  pontiff  of 
the  Empire  seriously  to  heart.     He  built  again  the 


388  THE  EMPEROR  JULIAN. 

temples  of  the  gods,  he  multiplied  sacrifices  until 
jesting  doubts  were  heard  as  to  the  sufficiency  of 
the  herds  and  flocks  of  his  dominions.  With  the 
pedantic  particularity  which  was  the  characteristic 
of  the  man  and  the  age,  he  engaged  personally  in 
the  rites  of  heathen  worship,  and  exposed  himself 
to  ridicule,  which,  like  other  enthusiasts,  he  seemed 
rather  to  court  than  to  shun.  But  while  he  revived 
the  splendors  of  the  old  ceremonial,  he  was  not 
unmindful  of  his  mission  as  a  religious  reformer ; 
and  there  is  no  more  painful  chapter  in  the  history 
of  human  error  than  his  attempt  to  breathe  life 
into  the  corpse  of  the  old  faith.  There  is  a  fearful 
incongruity  between  the  body  of  that  death  and 
the  purity  which  Julian  required  of  the  mouldering 
carcase.  So  long  as  he  remained  in  his  artificial 
world  of  professors  and  students,  he  might  imagine 
that  the  new  light  was  beginning  to  irradiate  the 
darkness ;  but  so  soon  as  he  came  down  to  the 
level  of  ordinary  humanity,  even  his  romantic  mind 
found  it  impossible  to  keep  up  the  illusion,  and  he 
has  made  grim  merriment  over  his  disappointment 
The  people  remained  plunged  in  a  dull  sensuality, 
from  which  they  were  to  be  roused  only  by  super 
stitious  fears.  His  reforms,  even  with  a  longer  and 
fairer  trial,  could  have  been  nothing  more  than  the 
failures  they  were.  The  pagans  had  no  ears  for  all 
his  fine  talk  about  purity  of  life,  fasting  and  praying, 
abstaining  from  meats  like  the  Jews,  and  singing 
hymns  like  the  Christians.  Had  Julian  lived  a  few 
years  longer  he  would  have  demonstrated  still  more 
signally — and  perhaps  to  his  own  consciousness — 
the  utter  hopelessness  of  the  old  religion.  The 


THE   EMPEROR  JULIAN.  389 

chosen  few  might  galvanize  it  into  a  false  life,  and 
make  it  do  duty  as  an  exponent  of  moral  ideas.  As 
the  religion  of  the  people,  it  was  dead. 

But  there  is  yet  another  aspect  of  Julian's  antago 
nism  to  Christianity.  It  is  commonly  said  that  he 
dreaded  the  republican  element  of  the  Christian 
religion.  Let  us  rather  say  that  he  dreaded  the 
influence  of  the  Christian  hierarchy,  and  strained 
many  a  point  to  break  it  down.  Offensive  to  his 
personal  pride,  it  was  dangerous  to  the  Imperial 
power.  Under  the  guise  of  non-resistance  to  the 
secular  arm,  there  was  a  spiritual  independence 
which  would  not  brook  control.  The  leaders  of 
the  Christian  Church  were  supported  by  the  strong 
cohort  of  the  middle  class,  and  in  the  increasing 
importance  of  the  Christian  bishops  Julian  saw  the 
waning  power  of  the  Imperial  throne.  His  very 
affectation  of  contempt,  as  in  the  matter  of  Athana- 
sius,  the  exiled  bishop  of  Alexandria,  is  a  very  thin 
disguise  for  his  apprehension.  No  wonder  that  he 
did  all  that  he  could  do  to  repress  the  growth  of  a 
religion  which  owed  a  higher  allegiance  than  that 
which  was  due  to  the  Emperor,  and  refused  to 
blend  the  Church  with  the  State,  only  to  make  the 
Church  the  State.  The  only  wonder  is  that  he 
proceeded  with  so  much  gentleness.  For,  after  all 
that  has  been  said  about  it,  it  appears  that  perse 
cution  formed  no  part  of  his  Imperial  plan,  and 
his  enemies  are  forced  to  admit  either  the  genuine 
mildness  of  his  philosophic  temper,  or  the  shrewd 
ness  of  his  insight  into  the  history  of  religion.  Cer 
tainly  he  was  the  only  pagan  emperor  of  any  real 
worth  who  recognized  the  political  dangerousness 


390  THE  EMPEROR  JULIAN". 

of  the  Christian  religion  and  did  not  use  active 
remedies.  He  knew  the  contagious  influence  of 
martyrdom,  and  set  out  with  a  firm  resolve  to  with 
hold  that  coveted  crown.  One  of  his  first  acts  was 
to  proclaim  entire  freedom  of  religion,  and  the 
martyrologists  have  had  hard  work  to  rake  up  a 
couple  of  victims  for  his  reign.  Small  thanks  has  he 
received  for  this  forbearance  ;  and  perhaps  he  does 
not  deserve  much,  if  his  forbearance  was  all  policy ; 
but  on  the  other  hand  it  must  be  admitted  by  the 
candid  student,  that  no  human  actions  could  stand 
the  artifices  of  interpretation  which  have  been 
employed  in  Julian's  case.  If  he  decrees  universal 
toleration,  it  is  that  he  may  have  the  satisfaction  of 
seeing  the  wrangling  of  the  contentious  Christian 
sects.  If  he  urges  his  representatives  to  have  full 
proof  of  the  criminality  of  a  Christian  before  they 
condemn  the  man,  lest  a  felon  be  transfigured  into 
a  martyr,  straightway  it  is  said  that  he  ordered  his 
subordinates  to  persecute  Christians  under  false 
pretences.  If  he  deplores  the  fanatic  rage  of  the 
heathen  populace,  it  is  set  down  to  the  charge  of 
contemptible  hypocrisy.  If  he  dismisses  a  Chris 
tian  from  his  presence,  an  ecclesiastical  historian  is 
found  who  adds,  without  a  shadow  of  authority, 
sans  doute  a  la  mort.  Read  his  edicts  backwards,  of 
course.  Displace  an  inconvenient  comma,  of  course. 

Close  around  him  and  confound  him,  the  confounder  of  us  all, 

Pelt  him,  pummel  him  and  maul  him,  rummage,  ransack,  over 
haul  him, 

Overbear  him  and  outbawl  him ;  bear  him  down  and  bring  him 
under, 

Bellow  like  a  burst  of  thunder,  Robber !  harpy  !  sink  of 
plunder  ! 

Rogue  and  villain  !  rogue  and  cheat!  rogue  and  villain,  I  repeat! 


THE  EMPEROR  JULIAN.  39! 

So  says  (Frere's)  Aristophanes  of  Cleon ;  and  if 
such  language  has  raised  up  a  defender  of  such  a 
character  as  Cleon,  we  cannot  wonder  that  a  nature 
as  noble  as  Julian's  was,  in  so  many  respects,  has 
found  champions  even  among  the  devoted  believers 
in  the  religion  which  he  so  bitterly  opposed.  Still, 
it  cannot  be  denied  that  he  overstepped  the  bounds 
of  his  own  philosophy  in  his  eager  efforts  to  gather 
proselytes  into  the  fold ;  and  the  Fathers  have 
much  to  say  about  the  petty  devices  by  which  he 
endeavored  to  entrap  the  conscience  of  his  Chris 
tian  subjects,  and  especially  his  Christian  soldiers. 
But  these  statements  must  be  taken  with  some 
grains  of  allowance,  for  we  must  remember  that 
Julian  was  adored  by  his  soldiers,  and  living,  as 
such  men  live,  on  the  breath  of  applause,  he  would 
not  have  willingly  alienated  the  affections  of  so 
large  a  portion  of  his  army.  Undeniable  is  his  sys 
tematic  elevation  of  pagans  to  high  positions  in  the 
Empire,  and,  no  doubt,  orthodox  heathenism  was 
an  overstrong  recommendation  in  his  eyes ;  but  we 
can  admit  all  this  without  drawing  the  hateful  infer 
ence  that  his  object  was  to  persecute  the  Christians 
by  proxy  without  compromising  his  reputation  for 
fairness.  On  this  reputation,  by  the  way,  he  prided 
himself  greatly,  and  yet  by  a  singular  maladroit- 
ness  he  has  managed  to  excite  the  liveliest  com 
ments  on  his  character  as  a  judge.  He  was  too 
fond  of  experimenting  on  himself,  and  letting  others 
in  to  see  the  show.  He  would  heap  up  religious 
causes  of  dislike  against  the  accused,  in  order  to 
acquire  more  moral  glory  by  the  acquittal.  He 
would  analyse  every  particular  of  an  offence  against 


392  THE   EMPEROR  JULIAN. 

himself,  and  gloat  over  every  new  phase  of  a  per 
sonal  insult,  in  order  that  the  triumph  over  his  fiery 
temper  might  be  the  more  resplendent  An  un 
healthy  nature,  if  you  choose,  but  not  an  ignoble 
one. 

Highly  characteristic  of  Julian  is  the  celebrated 
edict  in  which  he  forbade  the  Christian  professors 
to  lecture  on  the  monuments  of  Greek  literature.  It 
is  a  curious  production,  this  edict,  which  appears 
in  a  fragmentary  form  as  a  kind  of  letter ;  and  were 
we  not  rapidly  approaching  our  limit,  we  might 
hope  to  interest  the  reader  in  a  full  consideration  of 
the  various  points  which  this  elaborate  composition 
presents.  It  is  very  spiteful  in  its  tone,  and  at  first 
spite  seems  to  be  the  chief  ingredient.  What  the 
real  base  is,  we  cannot  pause  to  examine.  '  Educa 
tion  ',  says  Julian,  '  does  not  consist  in  fine  words 
and  elegant  phrases,  but  in  sound  sense  and  just 
judgment  on  moral  questions.  If  the  Christians 
were  right  in  condemning  the  religious  views  of 
the  great  pagan  authors  '  (inventory  of  Greek  litera 
ture),  '  they  were  wrong  in  using  them  in  their 
instructions,  and  showed  that  they  were  willing  to 
do  anything  for  a  few  shillings.  If  they  really 
believed  in  the  gods — why,  the  period  of  persecu 
tion  was  over,  the  temples  were  open,  and  they  were 
now  free  to  emulate  the  piety  of  Homer  and  the 
rest '  (second  inventory  of  Greek  literature).  '  If  they 
did  not  believe  in  Homer's  gods,  let  them  march 
to  the  churches  of  the  Galilseans  and  expound 
Matthew  and  Luke.'  The  Christian  Fathers  con 
sidered  themselves  very  much  complimented  by  this 
edict,  and  some  of  them  showed  how  little  they 


THE   EMPEROR  JULIAN.  393 

deserved  the  compliment  by  getting  up  an  opposi 
tion  Greek  literature.  They  flattered  themselves 
that  Julian  was  afraid  of  their  ridicule  and  their 
dialectics,  and  on  that  account  forbade  them  to 
study  the  models  of  classic  composition  and  to  draw 
from  the  resources  of  ancient  thought ;  and  they 
reported  him  as  saying :  '  We  must  not  sharpen  the 
tongues  of  the  Galilaeans  on  our  whetstone ;  for ', 
said  he,  quoting  the  old  proverb — 

"  We  nurse  the  pinion  which  impels  the  steel."  ' 

But  it  was  not  simply  on  religious  grounds  that 
Julian  opposed  Christianity.  The  Christian  pro 
fessors,  as  well  as  their  pagan  colleagues,  claimed 
to  be  not  teachers  of  rhetoric  only,  but  also  of 
ethics  and  political  philosophy,  and  such  claims 
were  enough  to  alarm  a  man  bent  on  a  reaction. 
This  possibly  gives  a  somewhat  more  satisfactory 
solution  of  his  motives,  if  indeed  any  solution  be 
needed  outside  of  his  morbid  temper.  But,  of 
course,  history  is  unanimous  in  condemning  this  act 
from  any  point  of  view.  His  eulogist,  Ammianus, 
is  quite  ashamed  of  his  hero  just  here:  'a  harsh 
proceeding ',  quoth  he,  '  and  one  to  be  buried  in 
perennial  silence r- — a  perennial  silence  which  the 
perennial  loquacity  of  such  fluencies  as  Gregory 
was  not  very  likely  to  accord.  A  harsh  proceeding, 
Ammianus  ?  An  infamous  proceeding,  Gregory  ? 
The  plan  of  a  dreamer  and  an  enthusiast :  as  well 
might  he  have  ordered  his  subjects  not  to  look  on 
the  sun,  which  he  adored ;  or  on  the  stars,  which 
were  the  symbols  of  his  divinities.  The  literature 
of  the  classic  past  is  the  inalienable  property  of 


394  THE  EMPEROR  JULIAN. 

humanity.  Bigots  may  denounce  it.  '  Scientists  ' 
and  sciolists  may  rain  down  fiery  indignation 
on  it.  Many  dish-waters  of  eloquence  cannot 
quench  it ;  neither  can  floods  of  useful  knowledge 
drown  it.  The  world  will  not  be  robbed  of  a  herit 
age  which -has  been  recognized  in  the  Scriptures 
themselves.  Is  it  altogether  insignificant  that  a 
fragment  of  pagan  morality,  '  Evil  communications 
corrupt  good  manners  ',  should  have  imbedded  itself 
in  the  most  sublime  exposition  of  our  hopes  of  im 
mortality  ? 

The  winter  following  Julian's  accession  was  not 
lost  to  literature,  and  it  is  to  this  date  that  the 
most  popular  of  his  extant  works  is  assigned — '  The 
Csesars ',  a  satirical  piece  written  for  the  Saturnalia 
or  Christmas  holidays,  in  which  the  Emperor  passes 
in  caustic  review  his  predecessors  on  the  throne.  In 
its  conception  and  in  some  of  the  details,  this  biting 
satire  is  Lucianic;  but  Julian  lacked  the  grace 
and  the  frivolity  of  the  earlier  farceur.  In  the  very 
opening  sentences  he  himself  acknowledges  the 
unfitness  of  his  nature  for  real  fun ;  and  the  clown 
(Silenus),  who  '  does  the  comic',  is  a  very  heavy 
father  of  poor  jokes.  The  machinery  of  the  piece 
is  simple.  Romulus  celebrates  the  Saturnalia,  and 
invites  the  emperors  to  meet  the  gods  at  dinner; 
as  the  guests  come  in  they  are  criticised  by  Silenus, 
and  very  few  escape  the  lash,  not  even  '  the  delight 
of  the  human  race ',  Titus ;  not  even  the  pattern 
philosopher,  Marcus  Aurelius.  A  dispute  ensues 
for  the  prize  of  merit — a  dispute  which  a  genuine 
Roman  would  have  limited  to  the  Romans;  but 
Julian  was  too  much  of  a  Greek  to  leave  out 


THE   EMPEROR  JULIAN.  395 

Alexander,  and  so,  after  Caesar,  Alexander  speaks, 
then  Augustus,  Trajan,  Marcus  Aurelius,  and  Con- 
stantine — the  last  merely  to  show  how  ridiculous  his 
pretensions  to  greatness  are.  After  the  speeches 
are  over,  each  of  the  contestants  is  required  to  state 
his  aim  in  life ;  and  they  are  then  distributed  among 
the  gods,  except  Constantius,  who  falls  into  the  arms  of 
Asotia  (Scapegracehood),  a  personification  intended 
to  represent  the  corrupt  morals  of  the  Christians. 
'  But,  to  thee ',  said  Hermes,  addressing  Julian,  '  to 
thee  I  have  given  to  know  Father  Mithras,  and  do 
thou  cleave  to  his  commandments ;  make  him  thy 
bower-cable  and  safe  anchorage  while  thou  livest ; 
and  so  when  thou  shalt  depart  hence,  thou  shalt  go 
with  good  hope  to  his  propitious  guidance.' 

The  stray  rays  of  light  which  this  composition 
throws  on  some  of  the  more  enigmatical  characters 
of  the  Empire  it  is  not  our  business  to  gather  up. 
Important  for  the  appreciation  of  Julian  is  the 
Greek  conception  of  the  Roman  state ;  the  Greek 
leaning  to  Alexander,  as  opposed  to  Caesar;  the 
Greek  preference  for  the  Greek  philosopher,  Marcus 
Aurelius.  Still  more  important  is  the  tone  in  which 
he  speaks  of  the  old  gods.  Even  to  him  they 
are  but  shadows,  and  the  Pantheon  a  columbarium. 
Saturn  and  Rhea,  nay  even  Jupiter  and  Juno,  were 
little  more  to  him  than  the  lay-figures  they  are  to 
us.  For  his  own  salvation  he  turns  not  to  Jupiter 
Optimus  Maximus,  but  to  an  outlandish  Mithras, 
a  Persian  god  of  the  sun. 

But  the  mention  of  the  Persians  warns  us  to  reel 
off  more  quickly  the  mingled  yarn  of  Julian's  life. 
Two  great  objects  he  had  in  view :  the  restoration 


396  THE   EMPEROR   JULIAN. 

of  the  pagan  religion,  the  conquest  of  the  Persians. 
The  war  against  Persia  was  an  historical  legacy, 
dating  back  to  the  time  of  the  Argonautic  expedi 
tion  and  the  siege  of  Troy.  Every  generation  had 
taken  its  turn  in  fighting  the  East.  The  ineradi 
cable  hatred  of  race  put  up  fresh  shoots  from  age 
to  age.  This  is  that  wrath  of  man  that  is  made  to 
praise  God ;  and  he  who  has  eyes  for  Sebastopol 
and  India  and  Candia  ought  to  have  eyes  for 
Jamaica  and  the  Negro  Dominion.  Still,  there  was 
no  pressing  necessity  for  the  war  against  Persia. 
The  Empire  was  exhausted,  and  Sapor  desired 
peace.  But  Julian  was  just  the  man  to  go  to  war 
for  an  idea,  and  for  an  historical  idea  sooner  than 
any  other ;  and  so  he  set  out  to  meet  his  doom. 
After  the  fatal  termination  of  the  expedition,  Chris 
tians  and  pagans  discovered  all  manner  of  omens 
that  foretold  the  result.  For  instance,  a  heathen 
professor  asked  a  Christian  saint  mockingly,  '  What 
is  the  son  of  the  carpenter  doing?'  and  the  Chris 
tian  saint,  in  no  very  saint-like  temper,  answered, 
'  He  is  making  a  coffin  for  your  Emperor ';  and  the 
angry  retort  was  afterwards  regarded  as  an  inspired 
prophecy. 

Julian  spent  most  of  his  reign  in  the  preparation 
and  execution  of  his  plans  against  the  Persians. 
Especially  noteworthy  was  his  sojourn  at  Antioch, 
a  gay  and  luxurious  capital,  in  which  the  old 
religion  had  few  followers  and  Julian  found  little 
sympathy.  An  abiding  monument  of  the  feud 
between  the  monarch  whose  missionary  labors 
failed  so  signally,  and  the  people  whose  ribald  jokes 
succeeded  so  handsomely,  is  preserved  to  us  in 


THE  EMPEROR  JULIAN. 

the  '  Misopogon  '  or  '  Beard-hater  ',  in  which  Julian 
out-Antiochs  the  Antiochenes  in  ridiculing  himself, 
and,  while  making  a  mock  confession  of  his  faults, 
takes  occasion  to  rasp  his  detractors  with  a  severity 
worthy  of  Juvenal,  and  with  as  little  effect.  In  the 
light  which  it  throws  on  the  rottenness  and  disloca 
tion  of  the  state  and  the  wrongheadedness  of  the 
man  who  thought  himself  divinely  commissioned 
to  purify  it  and  set  it  right,  the  '  Misopogon'  is  an 
interesting  study ;  and  we  are  sorry  for  such  students 
as  Gibbon,  who  merely  divide  their  sneers  between 
the  orthodox  sensualists  of  Antioch  and  the  fanatic 
reformer  on  the  throne. 

Last  scene  of  all.  A  sweltering  day  in  June, 
363.  The  Roman  army  was  ploughing  its  way 
back  from  an  unsuccessful  expedition,  sinking  in 
the  sand,  blinded  by  the  dust,  scorched  by  the 
sun.  Julian  rode  in  the  van,  his  breast  unprotected. 
Suddenly  an  alarm  was  heard ;  the  rear  was  attacked. 
Julian  snatched  a  shield  from  one  of  his  attendants 
and  hurried  to  the  rescue.  Recalled  to  the  front  by 
a  new  alarm,  he  plunged  into  the  thick  of  the  fight, 
urged  his  men  on  by  mad  gesticulations  and  frantic 
cries,  and  turned  the  tide  against  the  assailants. 
But  as  he  pressed  his  advantage  too  eagerly,  a  lance 
from  an  unknown  hand  grazed  his  arm  and  entered 
his  side.  The  sharp  steel  severed  the  muscles  of 
his  fingers  as  he  tried  to  draw  the  weapon  out,  and 
he  fell  swooning.  As  soon  as  his  pain  was  somewhat 
assuaged,  he  called  for  his  horse  and  his  arms — but 
his  campaigns  were  over.  There  is  a  fable  that 
as  Julian  fell  Christ  appeared  to  him  in  a  vision, 
and  that  the  apostate  filled  his  hand  with  his  life's 


398  THE   EMPEROR  JULIAN. 

blood  and  cast  it  toward  the  sky,  crying, '  Take  thy 
fill  of  blood,  O  Galilsean  !'— <  Take  thy  fill  of  blood, 
O  Cyrus  ! '  O  Tomyris,  what  a  plagiarism  !  Still 
more  current  is  the  rumor  that  his  last  words  were, 
'  Thou  hast  conquered,  O  Galilaean ! '  and  there  is 
yet  another  that  he  cried  out  in  reproach  of  the 
lying  oracles  that  had  misled  him — '  Thou  hast 
destroyed  me,  O  Mithras ! '  To  what  end  these 
dramatic  lies  ? 

Julian  remained  true  to  himself  in  the  last  hours 
of  his  life.  He  was  a  bookman  to  the  last.  He 
knew  how  great  men  had  died  in  books ;  he  had 
studied  their  dying  speeches.  The  lesson  was  well 
learned,  and  in  the  few  hours  which  he  had  to  live 
his  demeanor  and  his  words  were  grand.  No 
regret  for  the  past,  no  lamentations  for  his  untimely 
end,  no  fear  for  the  future.  A  long  conversation 
with  his  professorial  friends  on  abstruse  philosophic 
and  theosophic  subjects — a  draught  of  cold  water — 
and  in  the  chill  of  midnight  he  was  t  released  from 
life — to  live  again,  he  said,  among  the  constellations. 


PLATEN'S  POEMS 


PLATEN'S  POEMS.1 

Once  upon  a  time  Callimachus,  the  great  librarian 
of  Alexandria,  had  a  fierce  quarrel  with  his  pupil 
Apollonius,  and  by  dint  of  invective  and  intrigue 
drove  him  into  exile.  But  when  Callimachus  died, 
Apollonius  returned  in  honor,  became  the  second 
in  succession  to  his  old  master  and  enemy,  and, 
according  to  malicious  tradition,  the  poet  of  the 
Argonauts  was  buried  in  the  same  tomb  with  the 
relentless  author  of  the  '  Ibis '.  Little  does  posterity 
care  for  literary  feuds.  While  they  last,  it  may  be 
necessary  to  take  sides.  Whoever  says  a  word  in 
behalf  of  Gibber  is  a  sworn  foe  of  Pope ;  whoever 
is  for  Byron  is  against  Bowles.  But  the  next  gen 
eration  quietly  accords  to  each  worthy  his  crown  of 
glory  or  his  blanket  of  oblivion ;  and  if  certain  old 
rivals  could  be  recalled  to  life,  they  would  be  as 
astonished  to  see  each  other  established  in  Parnas 
sus,  or  soaking  in  Lethe,  as  Sublapsarians  and 

1i.  Geschichte  der  deutschenLiteraturim  neimzehnten  Jahr- 
hundert.  Von  Julian  Schmidt.  Leipzig  :  1855. 

2.  Gesammelte  Werke    des    Grafen    August    von     Platen. 
Stuttgart  und  Tubingen  :  1848. 

3.  Graf  von    Platen,  als  Mensch  und  Dichter.     Von    Jo 
hannes  Minckwitz.     Leipzig :   1838. 

4.  Briefwechsel   zwischen    August    Graf    von     Platen   und 
Johannes  Minckwitz.     Leipzig:   1836. 

5.  Poetischer  und  litterarischer  Nachlass  des  Grafen  August 
von  Platen.     Leipzig  :  1853. 


4O2  PLATEN'S  POEMS. 

Supralapsarians  to  meet  in  heaven  or  elsewhere  in 
the  future  world.  This  equalization,  which  the 
lapse  of  time  is  sure  to  effect,  is  not  unfrequently 
brought  about  by  distance  in  space ;  and  to  those 
who  have  been  initiated  into  the  jealousies  and 
squabbles  of  European  scholars,  it  is  not  a  little 
amusing  to  see  an  American  student  making  alter 
nate  salaams  to  men  whose  object  in  life,  next 
to  proving  themselves  everything,  is  to  prove  each 
other  nothing.  Now  if  you  add  distance  in  space 
to  lapse  of  time,  the  controversies  which  agitated 
literary  Europe  forty  years  ago  will  seem  very 
trifling  to  literary  America  of  the  present  day ;  we 
can  admire  a  'classicist'  without  despising  a 
'  romanticist ' ;  we  can  taste  the  perfume  of  Heine's 
flowers  without  defiling  Platen's  memory  with  the 
rank  subsoil  of  Heine's  hot-bed;  and  we  can  enjoy 
Platen's  artistic  creations  without  joining  in  Platen's 
injustice  to  Immermann. 

It  is  in  this  tolerant  spirit  that  we  would  ask  the 
reader  to  accompany  us  as  we  go  back  to  the  study 
of  an  author  who  fascinated  our  ingenuous  youth 
by  clothing  modern  thought  with  the  purple  light 
of  antiquity.  But  as  we  look  over  the  once  familiar 
pages  of  Platen,  we  are  seized  with  the  profound 
discouragement  which  every  one  has  felt  who  has 
attempted  to  interpret  to  another  the  charms  of  the 
scenes  of  his  own  early  happiness.  The  landscape 
dims  in  the  eye  of  him  who  would  fain  point  out 
its  beauties.  So  here  we  cannot  reproduce  for  our 
selves  the  fascination  of  a  once  favorite  author, 
much  less  for  others.  Not  for  ourselves,  because  in 
youth  the  recognition  of  the  beautiful  in  form  gives 


PLATEN'S  POEMS.  403 

a  feeling  of  proprietorship  which  maturer  years  will 
not  admit.  Not  for  others,  because  we  may  well 
despair  of  giving  to  an  English  translation  the  fin 
ished  perfection  of  language  which  is  to  many  the 
highest,  to  some  the  sole  charm  of  Platen.  And 
then  the  life  of  a  scholar  or  of  a  poet  has  seldom  a 
dramatic  interest  except  for  those  who  can  sympa 
thize  with  the  active  play  of  emotions  in  sensitive 
and  refined  natures,  the  hot  flush  of  the  first  strug 
gles,  the  glow  of  the  first  successes,  the  chill  of  the  first 
disappointments,  the  alternations  of  hope  and  fear,  the 
bitter  tang  that  rises  up,  no  matter  with  what  roses 
the  cup  is  crowned,  the  half-consciousness  of  failure 
that  haunts  genius  and  the  end — lacet  ecce  Tibullus. 
Just  such  a  life  was  Platen's,  and  we  cannot  hope 
to  invest  it  with  dramatic  interest  unless  we  go  into 
details  which  would  interest  only  the  student  of 
German  literature,  and  not  the  general  reader,  for 
whom  alone  this  paper  is  written,  and  who  in  all 
likelihood  never  heard  of  Platen  since  he  was  born. 
For  after  all  we  have  not  emancipated  ourselves  yet 
from  English  influence,  and  it  is  not  often  that  a 
German  writer  makes  a  reputation  on  this  side  of 
the  water  without  undergoing  the  baptism  of  the 
Channel.  And  the  English  have  never  taken  to 
Platen ;  partly  because  they  lack  the  artistic  sense1 

1  This  relates,  of  course,  primarily  to  the  metrical  form  of 
Platen's  poems,  and  although  the  strictures  made  in  1868  may 
not  be  wholly  apt  in  1890,  yet  it  is  still  true  that  too  little 
attention  is  paid  to  such  matters  in  England,  and  that  it  is  still 
possible  there  to  edit  Aristophanes,  Platen's  model,  without  so 
much  as  a  conspectus  metrorum,  to  say  nothing  of  any  interpre 
tation  of  the  meaning  of  the  rhythms  ;  and  without  an  apprecia 
tion  of  the  meaning  of  the  rhythms,  Aristophanes  might  as 
well  be  written  in  prose. — B.  L.  G. 


404  PLATEN'S  POEMS. 

which  is  necessary  to  appreciate  the  exquisite  finish 
of  his  work,  and  partly  because  they  want  that  gen 
erosity  which  Continental  wit  and  humor  demand. 
An  Englishman  can  understand  a  French  joke, 
because  it  is  an  Irish  joke  right  end  foremost;  but 
not  one  Englishman  in  fifty  can  see  any  fun  in  Ger 
man  wit.  There  is  too  much  raison  demonstrative 
about  the  English  even  in  their  nonsense,  and  if 
Platen,  as  a  poet,  has  found  no  acceptance  with 
them,  Platen,  as  a  wit,  has  found  even  less.  Popu 
lar,  Platen  never  was  and  never  can  be,  even  in  his 
own  country.  Some  of  his  minor  poems  have 
found  their  way  into  the  readers,  and  are  repeated 
at  school  declamations  in  Germany.  His  two  chief 
comedies,  '  The  Fateful  Fork  '  and  '  The  Romantic 
QEdipus ',  have  made  themselves  a  permanent  place 
in  the  history  of  German  literature.  But  he  holds 
nobody's  heart-strings ;  he  only  plays  about  the 
brain.  His  divining-rod  might  tickle  the  fancy,  it 
is  impotent  to  call  forth  tears.  And  yet  every  page 
of  his  life,  every  page  of  his  letters,  shows  a  noble 
and  sympathetic  nature ;  and  we  have  been  tempted 
to  publish  this  study,  not  so  much  to  express  a 
present  admiration  of  Platen  as  to  satisfy  an  old 
desire  to  commend  to  the  hearts  and  minds  of 
others  a  poet  whose  lofty  and  melodious  verses  bring 
back  to  the  reviewer,  in  spite  of  his  conventional 
impersonality,  the  golden  music  of  the  past,  blend 
ing  with  the  roll  of  the  Rhine  and  lingering  among 
the  echoes  of  the  Seven  Mountains.1 

1 1  became  acquainted  with  Platen's  poems  at  Bonn  in  1852, 
having  been  introduced  to  them  by  my  fellow-student  and  dear 
friend,  Emil  Hiibner,  whose  friendship  has  known  no  more  slack- 


PLATENS  POEMS.  405 

Augustus,  Count  of  Platen-Hallermunde,  was 
born  of  an  ancient  North  German  family  at  Ans- 
bach,  a  town  which  the  reader  of  Carlyle's  Fried- 
rich  will  remember  in  connection  with  the  marriage 
of  Friedrich's  sister.  When  Platen  came  into  the 
world,  Ansbach  was  Prussian ;  but  in  one  of  Napo 
leon's  unsettlings  it  fell  into  the  hands  of  Bavaria, 
and  in  one  of  Bismarck's  unsettlings  it  may  get 
back  to  Prussia  again.  Born  in  1796,  Platen  was 
sent,  as  soon  as  he  was  old  enough,  to  the  Royal 
Military  Academy  at  Munich — an  unremarkable 
boy,  except  that  he  was  rather  bookish  and  reserved. 
From  the  Military  Academy  he  was  transferred  to 
the  Royal  Institution  for  the  Education  of  Pages, 
which  seems  to  have  afforded  greater  leisure  and 
more  ample  facilities  for  the  kind  of  culture  that  he 
craved.  Commissioned  lieutenant  in  1814,  he  was 
called  upon  the  next  year  to  take  part  in  the  last 
brief  campaign  against  Napoleon,  and  this  military 
experience,  short  as  it  was,  inspired  him  with  the 
most  faithful  of  all  loves — the  love  of  travel.  The 
tenacity  of  this  love  the  old  Greeks  knew  full  well 
when  they  talked  of  the  wise  man  Sisyphus  and  his 
rolling  stone.  So  long  as  he  trundled  that  stone 
over  the  wide  world,  like  his  by-blow  Ulysses  after 
him,  he  was  happy ;  but  in  Hades  he  was  doomed 
to  a  narrower  compass,  and  his  philosopher's  stone 
became  an  instrument  of  torture.  In  his  time, 

ness  in  all  these  years  than  has  his  work,  and  what  that  work  has 
been,  no  scholar  needs  to  be  told.  Several  of  our  set  knew 
long  stretches  of  Platen's  poems  by  heart,  and  never  were  his 
'  lofty  and  melodious  verses'  more  lustily  declaimed  than  on 
our  trips  to  Heisterbach  and  the  Siebengebirge.— B.  L.  G. 


406  PLATEN'S  POEMS. 

Platen  played  both  parts,  but  he  was  always  fettered 
by  his  military  obligations,  and  no  matter  how  poetic 
a  man  may  be,  a  lieutenant  on  furlough  is  a  prosaic 
object  in  a  period  of  profound  peace.  In  1818 
he  went  to  the  University  of  Wiirzburg,  and 
thence  to  Erlangen.  His  industry  was  great,  and 
the  list  of  languages  that  he  learned  is,  to  say  the 
least,  respectable  for  a  military  man.  Besides 
Latin  and  Greek,  French  and  English,  Spanish  and 
Italian,  which  we  might  expect,  we  find  Persian  and 
Arabic,  Dutch  and  Swedish.  His  favorite  teacher 
was  the  philosopher  Schelling,  for  whom  he  enter 
tained  the  greatest  reverence  and  affection;  but 
beyond  Schelling  and  a  few  intimates,  he  cared  for 
no  one.  He  was  all  his  life  shy  and  reserved.  His 
vacation  trips  brought  him  into  contact  with  some 
of  the  great  poets  of  Germany,  with  Goethe,  with 
Uhland  and  with  Ruckert.  Riickert  was  a  won 
derful  poet — he  is  not  long  dead — far  more  mascu 
line  than  Platen,  and  gifted  with  a  far  easier  mastery 
of  the  language.  His  playfulness  is  more  sponta 
neous  ;  his  serious  verses  are  deeper ;  his  satiric 
knout  takes  out  the  flesh  at  every  stroke.  Platen 
felt  the  influence  of  the  stronger  genius,  and,  inspired 
by  Riickert,  he  attempted  to  transfer  to  the  German 
language  the  form  as  well  as  the  spirit  of  that 
Persian  poetry  which  Goethe's  '  Divan '  had  made 
so  popular.  Platen's  little  volume  of  '  Gaselen ' 
appeared  in  1821.  The  compass  of  the  ghazel  is 
limited  to  a  few  verses ;  its  sphere  is  confined  to 
love  and  wine  and  friendship,  and  the  graver 
thoughts  that  rise  now  and  then  must  not  betray  the 
depth  from  which  they  have  come  to  the  surface. 


PLATEN'S  POEMS.  407 

The  metre  of  the  ghazel  is  peculiar.  Its  melody 
does  not  strike  every  ear  at  first ;  but  it  gains  on 
the  lover  of  poetical  forms  more  and  more  until  it 
haunts  the  ear  like  an  importunate  tune  that  will 
not  let  itself  be  forgotten.  The  first  two  verses 
rhyme,  and  then  every  alternate  verse  repeats  the 
consonance  of  the  first  distich,  so  that  we  have  a 
symbolism  which  it  is  not  hard  to  divine — a  perfect 
concord  of  feeling  broken  up  and  yet  renewed  from 
time  to  time,  love  and  disappointment,  missing, 
meeting  and  yearning — the  very  measure  for  joy 
that  falls  short  of  ecstasy,  and  for  all  the  sweet 
vexation  of  love.  A  few  years  ago  an  anonymous 
writer  published  in  a  forgotten  magazine1  some 
American  ghazels,  evidently  reflexes  of  Platen. 
We  will  reproduce  a  couple  of  them  here  instead  of 
attempting  to  translate  from  our  author,  because 
they  serve  to  give  the  reader  a  more  correct  idea  of 
the  structure,  inasmuch  as  they  are  not  bound  by 
the  fetters  of  a  translation  which  are  peculiarly  irk 
some  when  the  purity  of  the  form  is  a  matter  of  so 
much  importance. 

The  prison'd  spirit  is  set  free  at  last, 
The  seed  upspringeth  to  a  tree  at  last; 
The  truant  brooklet  wanders  through  the  mead, 
But  runs  to  meet  his  lord  the  sea  at  last ; 
The  honey-bee  collects  all  day  her  store, 
Yet  homeward  turns  the  weary  bee  at  last ; 
The  clouds  that  hide  the  beauty  of  the  sun, 
Stretch  out  their  fleecy  wings  and  flee  at  last. 

1  The  Southern  Literary  Messenger,  then  edited  by  John  R. 
Thompson — neither  periodical  nor  editor  yet  forgotten  by  the 
men  of  the  Old  South.  The  anonymous  writer — B.  L.  G. 


408  PLATEN'S  POEMS. 

The  stubborn  lock  defends  the  treasure-house, 
But  cunning  locksmiths  find  the  key  at  last ; 
My  soul  hath  sought  for  bliss  in  ev'ry  clime, 
And  finds  its  only  bliss  in  thee  at  last. 

Whatever  fortune  gives,  in  haste  collect, 
And  seize  the  moment  whilst  thou  mayst  collect ; 
Misguided  pilgrims  fainting  sore  for  food, 
A  meal  of  berries  from  the  waste  collect ; 
Disporting  children  on  the  shore  the  shells 
The  scornful  sea  has  thither  chased  collect; 
The  penetrating  bees  the  hidden  sweets 
13eep  in  the  lily's  bosom  placed  collect ; 
Unwearied  scholars  bend  them  o'er  their  books, 
And  words  which  Time  had  nigh  effaced  collect ; 
So  too  doth  she  to  whom  my  songs  are  due, 
The  lines  my  fever'd  hand  hath  traced  collect. 

But  neither  form  nor  matter  of  Platen's  '  Gaselen ' 
was  so  well  received  as  was  expected  by  the  poet, 
who  was  always  very  much  in  love  with  his  last 
effort  and  went  on  from  illusion  to  illusion.  In 
his  first  ghazels,  Platen  was  too  much  absorbed  in 
the  study  of  his  Persian  original,  and  had  to  con 
tent  himself  with  having  gained  at  Munich  the 
reputation  of  a  scholar.  The  novelty  of  the  form 
and  the  intense  Orientalism  of  the  thought  repelled 
instead  of  attracting  the  masses;  and  one  of  Platen's 
correspondents  remarks  sensibly  enough,  that  '  if 
Goethe  had  commenced  with  his  '  Divan  ' — if  indeed 
that  had  beenpossible — he  would  hardly  have  become 
the  favorite  of  the  Germans.'  And  not  only  was 
the  general  public  cold,  but  the  few  scholars  that 
might  have  enjoyed  the  reproduction  of  the  East 
were  disturbed  by  details  borrowed  from  Ansbach 
rather  than  from  Ispahan.  His  second  effort  in 
this  direction  was  more  successful.  '  These  new 


PLATEN'S  POEMS.  409 

ghazels  have  more  sterling  worth ',  says  the  author, 
'  than  the  earlier  collection  ';  and  he  wishes  them 
to  be  regarded  as  his  first  essays  in  this  line.  In 
these  poems  he  gave  up  the  pedantic  adherence  to 
Oriental  form  and  Oriental  expression,  took  a  wider 
range  of  thought,  and  breathed  through  the  ghazels 
his  real  feelings,  not  the  simulated  passions  of  a 
Persian.  But  Goethe's  kindly  mention  of  the  young 
poet  was  not  a  passport  to  immortality ;  and  Im- 
mermann  only  expressed  the  idea  of  a  large  class 
when  he  said,  with  a  coarseness  peculiarly  German, 
that  the  ghazels  were  the  reproduction  of  a  surfeit 
of  fruit  from  the  gardens  of  Shiraz.1 

As  Platen  reflected  in  the  '  Gaselen '  his  study  of 
Persian  poetry,  so  his  close  occupation  with  the 
Spanish  drama  mirrors  itself  in  his  first  complete 
dramatic  piece,  a  little  comedy  entitled  the  '  Glass 
Slipper ',  in  which  the  familiar  fairy  tales  of  Cin 
derella  (Aschenbrodel)  and  the  Sleeping  Beauty 
are  curiously  blended.  'A  lady  observed  that  the 
piece  united  English  wit  with  Spanish  fire ';  •  but 
the  director  of  the  Court  Theatre  at  Munich 
observed  that '  while  the  piece  was  excellent,  there 
was  nothing  to  be  made  by  it ';  and  a  few  months 
afterwards,  in  May,  1824,  Platen  records  with  the 
proud  satisfaction  of  an  unrecognized  genius  that 
*  the  Glass  Slipper  has  been  refused  by  no  less  than 
five  theatres '.  The  *  Glass  Slipper '  was  followed 
by  the  '  Treasure  of  Rhampsinitus ';  the  subject 
taken  from  the  famous  story  in  Herodotus  (ii.  121), 

1  Von  den  Friichten  die  sie  aus  dem  Gartenhain  von  Schiraz 

stehlen, 
Essen  sie  zu  viel,  die  Armen,  und  vomiren  dann  Gaselen. 


410  PLATEN'S  POEMS. 

the  whole  cast  intensely  modern  and  designedly 
so.  There  are  good  touches  here  and  there,  but 
the  poet  was  dissatisfied  with  his  work  and  thought 
of  remodelling  it.  As  is  stands  it  marks  a  transi 
tion  from  his  Spanish  to  his  Greek  studies,  and 
forms  a  preparation  for  the  two  comedies  which 
constitute  Platen's  claim  to  a  permanent  position 
among  the  classic  dramatists  of  Germany,  or  rather 
among  the  classic  satirists  ;  for  the  '  Fateful  Fork  ' 
and  the  '  Romantic  GEdipus '  are  not  to  be  acted, 
and  a  drama  that  cannot  be  acted  is  none  at  all.  As 
a  dramatist  proper,  Platen  failed  utterly,  or,  at  most, 
attained  what  the  French  call  by  a  droll  euphemism, 
a  success  of  esteem.  '  Berengar ',  'Aucassin  and 
Nicolette ', '  The  Tower  with  Seven  Gates ',  and  '  The 
League  of  Cambrai ',  may 'continue  to  be  printed, 
they  will  not  continue  to  be  read,  except  perhaps 
to  prove  that  the  most  complete  mastery  of  the 
language  and  the  most  just  conception  of  the 
requirements  of  the  drama  will  not  avail  where  the 
creative  faculty  is  wanting.  The  bitterness  of 
Platen's  early  failures  had  perhaps  as  much  to  do 
with  his  attack  on  the  reigning  dramatists  of  the 
day,  as  had  his  outraged  sense  of  artistic  truth. 
Indeed,  as  we  have  already  intimated,  all  Platen's 
early  dramatic  compositions  belong  essentially  to 
the  romantic  school.  They  were  all  put  together 
under  the  double  influence  of  Shakespeare  and  the 
Spanish  poets ;  and  if  we  escape  the  interminable 
lists  of  stars  and  flowers  and  colors  which  oppress 
us  in  Calderon  and  Lope,  we  do  not  escape  a 
strange  cross  between  the  official  fun-maker  of  the 
Spanish  drama  and  the  fool  of  the  Shakespearian. 


PLATEN'S  POEMS.  4! I 

But  Platen's  fooling  is  not  like  Sir  Toby  Belch's ; 
it  is  not  '  admirable ' ;  nor  is  he  like  Sir  Andrew 
Aguecheek ;  he  does  not  *  do  it  natural '.  His  puns 
are  as  bad  or  as  good  as  Shakespeare's,  but  there 
the  likeness  to  Shakespeare  stops.  Shakespeare's 
clowns  are  for  the  most  part  spontaneous ;  Platen's 
never.  Shakespeare's  nonsense  is  the  surplusage 
or  sublimation  of  sense;  Platen's  too  often  the 
refuge  of  poverty.  But  why  speak  of  Shakespeare  ? 
In  this  whole  field  Tieck  is  immeasurably  the  superior 
of  Platen. 

But  Platen  indubitably  had  high  gifts,  orw  we 
should  not  have  bespoken  for  him  the  reader's 
attention.  He  had  keen  intellect,  wonderful  com 
mand  of  language,  an  earnest  love  of  art,  and  the 
moral  consecration  of  his  calling  as  a  poet.  But  if 
we  regard  the  poet  as  a  maker,  as  a  creator,  Platen 
disappoints  us.  He  has  left  no  character  to  call 
him  father.  He  has  not  enriched  the  world  by  one 
grand  conception.  His  lyric  poems  commend 
themselves  by  their  exquisite  beauty  of  form,  and 
some  of  his  minor  pieces  quiver  with  suppressed 
sensibility.1  But  apart  from  the  gratification  of  the 

1  Witness  these  lines  : 

0  happy  time  in  which  a  man  can  love  his  fellow-man  : 
Upon  my  heart  there  lies  a  curse,  upon  my  soul  a  ban. 

Once  bitter  anguish  was  my  lot,  I've  love  and  fortune  now; 
But  how  can  I  return  the  love  ?     Alas  !  I  know  not  how. 

All  calmness  and  all  joylessness,  from  East  to  West  I  go, 
Unutterable  frost  succeeds  unutterable  glow  ; 

And  if  a  light  and  loving  hand  but  chance  my  hand  to  press, 

1  feel  at  once  a  sudden  pain  and  deep  rebelliousness. 

Why,  then,  in  all  your  beauty's  light  upon  my  senses  burst, 
As  if  my  life  were  warm  and  full  as  was  my  youth  at  first  ? 


412  PLATEN'S  POEMS. 

artistic  sense  in  the  one  case,  and  common  sym 
pathy  in  the  other,  Platen  is  chiefly  remarkable  as 
the  assailant  of  an  ephemeral  school  —  the  School  of 
Destiny. 

The  mutterings  of  Platen's  anger  are  heard  first 
in  the  prologue  to  the  'Glass  Slipper',  in  which  he 
says: 

Of  horrid  murder  and  outrageous  crime, 
And  deeds  of  lamentable  Destiny, 
You've  heard  abundance  in  these  latter  days, 
Deliver'd  from  our  modern  German  stage. 


in  the  '  Treasure  of  Rhampsinitus  ',  one  of 
the  characters  cries  out  : 

*  Guilt  '  is  a  foul  abortion  of  the  times. 

Now  '  Guilt'  (Die  Schuld)  is  the  title  of  Milliner's 
most  famous  drama  ;  and  against  Miillner,  though 
not  solely  against  him,  —  nay,  as  Platen  himself  says, 
only  in  passing  against  him  —  Platen's  first  Aristo- 
phanic  comedy  was  directed.  Miillner  is  one  of 
those  dramatists  that  Carlyle  stamped  out  so 
unmercifully  in  his  famous  article  on  '  German 
Playwrights  ',  which  put  an  end  to  anything  like  a 
success  of  the  Destiny  school  beyond  the  Channel. 

And  again  from  one  of  his  sonnets  :  — 

My  soul  by  inner  contest  rudely  jarred, 
Hath  felt  so  oft  in  this  short  life  of  mine, 
How  easily  I  could  my  home  resign  ; 

But  ah  !  to  find  a  second  home,  how  hard  ! 

This  is  like  Alfieri  :— 

Domo  or  da  lunga  esperienza  e  mite 
Dai  maestri  anni  ai  peregrini  guai 
Prepongo  i  guai  de  le  contrade  avite. 


PLATEN'S  POEMS.  413 

In  those  days  Carlyle  was  high  authority  in  such 
matters,  and  his  emphatic  peroration  seems  to  have 
had  its  effect.  'As  Foreign  Reviewers',  he  says, 
'  we  stand  on  the  coast  of  the  country  as  a  sort  of 
Tide-waiters  and  Preventive-service  men,  to  con 
tend  with  our  utmost  vigor  that  no  improper  article 
be  landed.  These  offices,  it  would  seem,  as  in  the 
material  world,  so  also  in  the  literary  and  spiritual, 
usually  fall  to  the  lot  of  aged,  invalided  or  other 
wise  decayed  persons;  but  this  is  little  to  the 
matter.  As  true  British  subjects,  with  ready  will, 
we  are  here  to  discharge  that  duty.  Movements, 
we  observe,  are  making  along  the  beach,  and  sig 
nals  out  seawards,  as  if  these  Klingemanns  and 
Mullners  were  to  be  landed  on  our  soil ;  but 
through  the  strength  of  heaven  this  shall  not  be 
done  till  the  "  most  thinking  people  "  know  what  it 
is  that  is  landing ! ' 

The  very  year  in  which  Carlyle  published  his 
essay  Miillner  died,  and  he  is  to  all  intents  as 
entirely  forgotten  in  Germany  now  as  he  was  un 
known  in  England  then ;  so  that  a  man  whose 
poems  were  at  once  studied  as  if  he  were  an 
^Eschylus  or  a  Sophocles,  is  completely  buried  in  an 
oblivion  which  seems  to  be  of  forty  centuries  rather 
than  of  forty  years.  Of  a  different  and  a  higher 
type  is  Grillparzer ;  but  in  spite  of  Grillparzer  the 
Tragedy  of  Destiny  is  one  of  the  bygones. 

To  quote  again  from  Carlyle,  here  is  Milliner's 
recipe :  '  That  a  man,  on  a  certain  day  of  the  month, 
shall  fall  into  crime,  for  which  an  invisible  Fate 
shall  silently  pursue  him,  punishing  the  transgres 
sion,  most  probably,  on  the  same  day  of  the  month 


4H  PLATEN'S  POEMS. 

annually,  unless,  as  in  the  Twenty-ninth,  it  be  leap- 
year,  and  Fate  in  this  may  be,  to  a  certain  extent, 
bilked  ;  and  never  resting  until  the  poor  wight 
himself,  and  perhaps  his  last  descendant,  shall  be 
swept  away  with  the  besom  of  destruction ;  such, 
more  or  less  disguised,  frequently  without  any 
disguise,  is  the  tragic  essence,  the  vital  principle, 
natural  or  galvanic  we  are  not  deciding,  of  all  Dr. 
Milliner's  dramas.'  Far  different  is  this  Fate  from 
the  Fate  of  the  Greeks.  '  The  Fate  of  the  Greeks, 
though  a  false,  was  a  lofty  hypothesis,  and  harmo 
nized  sufficiently  with  the  whole  sensual  and  material 
structure  of  their  theology ;  a  ground  of  deepest 
black  on  which  that  gorgeous  phantasmagoria  was 
fitly  enough  painted.  Besides,  with  them  the  aveng 
ing  Power  dwelt,  at  least  in  its  visible  manifestations, 
among  the  high  places  of  the  earth,  visiting  only 
kingly  houses  and  world's  criminals,  from  whom 
it  might  be  supposed  the  world,  but  for  such 
miraculous  interferences,  could  have  exacted  no 
vengeance  or  found  no  protection  and  purification. 
Never,  that  we  recollect  of,  did  the  Erinnyes  be 
come  sheriff's  officers,  and  Fate  a  justice  of  the 
peace,  hauling  poor  drudges  to  the  treadmill  'for 
robbery  of  hen-roosts,  or  scattering  the  earth  with 
steel-traps  to  keep  down  poaching.'  Again,  the 
Greek  Fate  makes  sin  the  punishment  of  sin  until 
it  destroys  itself;  but  each  successive  stage  is  a 
growth,  and  the  fruit  of  crime  ripens  to  seed,  the 
seed  to  new  fruit.  The  Greek  Fate  is  a  mill  of  the 
gods,  as  their  own  proverb  has  it.  This  German 
Fate  is  a  blind  donkey-power  that  grinds  out  a 
murder  or  an  incest  with  each  revolution  of  the 


PLATEN'S  POEMS.  415 

wheel,  until  there  is  nothing  more  to  grind.  It 
destroys  individuality,  it  makes  character  impos 
sible,  it  substitutes  the  machinist  for  the  poet,  and 
oil  (midnight  or  other)  for  inspiration.  Such  was 
the  school  against  which  Platen  came  forth  in  his 
comedy,  '  Die  verhangnissvolle  Gabel ',  or  the 
'  Fateful  Fork '. 

The  scene  of  the  '  Fateful  Fork  '  is  laid  in  Arcadia, 
and  the  play  opens  in  the  house  of  Damon,  J.  P., 
who  is  in  the  act  of  receiving  the  complaint  of  one 
Phyllis,  wife  of  the  swain  Mopsus.  The  establish 
ment  of  the  rustic  couple  has  been  robbed  of  all  the 
tableware  except  one  ancestral  fork,  with  which  the 
husband,  at  the  time  of  the  theft,  was  picking  his 
pastoral  teeth  after  the  Arcadian  and  German 
fashion.  Suspicion  has  fallen  on  a  vagabond  Jew, 
whom  Sirmio  the  beadle  is  at  once  sent  to  arrest. 
After  a  short  colloquy,  Phyllis  makes  her  reverence 
and  Sirmio  appears  with  the  delinquent,  who 
answers  to  the  name  of  Schmuhl  (Samuel).  But 
though  the  pedlar's  pack  rattles  with  the  stolen 
goods,  the  Justice  will  not  listen  to  the  charge.  It 
is  all  a  mistake,  for  Schmuhl  turns  out  to  be  an  old 
college  friend,  and  the  two  fall  into  very  confidential 
chat  which  shows  that  Schmuhl  has  been  pursuing 
with  undiminished  ardor  the  study  of  alchemy  and 
magic  so  happily  begun  at  Leipzig.  In  Gottingen, 
however,  he  was  forced  to  be  more  careful  and  do 
himself  all  the  good  he  could  by  stealth,  '  for  a  man 
of  thought  is  deemed  a  fantastical  fool  there.'  But 
though  Gottingen  is  so  sober-sided,  the  neighboring 
ruin,  the  Plesse,  is  romantic ;  and  it  was  on  the 
ruins  of  the  Plesse  that  a  most  startling  adventure 


416  PLATEN'S  POEMS. 

befel  this  Schmuhl,  who  is  the  real  hero  of  the 
piece,  and  who  loves  to  spout  anapaestic  tetrameters 
which  we  may  well  despair  of  reproducing  prop 
erly  in  English.  We  feel  with  Platen  that  the 
English  is  a  poor  language  for  such  a  metre : 

'  No  fulness  of  accent,  confusion  of  tongues,  and  short  mono 
syllables  always.' 

But  if  the  good-natured  reader  will  occasionally 
accept  a  trochee  for  a  spondee,  and  vice  versa,  we  will 
venture  upon  the  measure.  Here  is  the  vision  : 

I  was  sitting  one  night  by  the  light  of  the  moon,  on  the  Pless 
with  its  ruins  romantic, 

And  the  zephyr  was  roving  above  the  fields  through  the  branch 
ing  tops  of  the  beech-trees, 

When  a  ghost  appeared — I  had  summoned  her  long — 'twas  a 
ghost  with  Treasury  warrants, 

Of  Arcady  she,  Salome  her  name,  and  her  style  of  the  « An 
cestress  '  order. 

She  began,  and  I  listened  with  all  my  ears,  for  she  spoke  in 
Viennese  German  : 

'  You  are  wasting  your  time  on  alchemical  stuff  and  neglecting 
actual  treasures ; 

For  in  Arcady  lies  three  feet  underground  a  treasure  that's  not 
to  be  sneezed  at ; 

And  if  you  would  know  where  it  is,  I  reply  'tis  enclosed  in  a 
casket  of  metal, 

In  the  farm-yard  of  Mopsus  the  shepherd  and  sheep — you'll 
find  it  just  under  the  kennel.' 

But  a  moment  she  paused,  and  then  she  went  on  in  her  talk  to 
the  following  purport  : 

'  Yet  you  must  beware  of  the  treacherous  hoard — blood-guilti 
ness  cleaves  to  the  treasure, 

Too  deep  for  a  cure,  and  it  comes  from  the  blood — ah  me  ! 
from  the  blood  of  my  husband  ; 

For  I,  his  own  wife,  to  the  other  world  in  my  innocence  gave 
him  a  passage. 

From  my  childhood  up,  as  in  ghosthood  now,  I've  felt  an  invin 
cible  horror 


PLATEN'S  POEMS.  4-1  / 

Of  spiders,  and  feared  the  disgusting  things — far  more  than 

the  seventh  commandment. 
One  evening  I  sat  by  the   side  of  my  lord — who  was  comfort 

itself— at  the  table, 
When  down  from  the  ceiling  plumped  into  my  mouth  a  most 

horrible  beast  of  a  spider  ! 

I  screamed  just  as  if  I  were  spitted  alive  ;  but  alas  !  my  unfor 
tunate  husband 
Was  alarmed,  and  he  pierced  his  throat  with  the   fork  with 

the  which  he  was  eating  potatoes, 
And  he  died  ;  and  the  tooth  of  a  cruel  remorse  ever  gnawed 

this  susceptible  bosom, 
And  though  I  got  married  three  times  after  that,  to  smother  the 

thought  of  my  husband, 
Yet  nothing  went  right ;  I  was  under  a  cloud  from  the  time  of 

that  fatal  disaster. 
Whenever  I  rouged  one  cheek  for  a  ball  I  was   sure  not  to 

think  of  the  other  ; 
When  I  threaded  my  needle  'twas  all  in  my  eye,  and  not  in 

the  eye  of  the  needle  ; 
When  I  wanted  to  season  my  soup  I  would  take  the  sand-box 

instead  of  the  caster  ; 
And  it  all  went  wrong,  or  all  right  to  the  dogs,  by  Destiny's 

visible  vengeance. 
And  now  I  am  dead,  I  must  wander  the  earth  until  my  unlucky 

descendants, 
Who  are  heirs  of  the  woe  of  the  Fateful  Fork,  have  all  to  the 

uttermost  perished. 

But  my  great-grandson — woe — woe  is  me  ! — has  a  dozen  chubby- 
faced  children — 
O  !  the  horrible  brood  !'  and  she  cried  '  Woe's  me  !'  and  she 

heaped  '  woe's  me  '  upon  'woe's  me  ', 
'  Go  dig  for  the  treasure,'  she  told  me  at  last,  'and  the  devil 

be  all  my  salvation.' 
She  vanished,  the  veil  of  the  night  was  rent  and  the  mists  sank 

down  to  the  valley. 
Next  day  in  the  office  I  booked  myself  for  an  inside  seat  to 

Arcadia. 
To  be  sure  all  the  fellows  made  merry  at  me  and  called  me  a 

subject  for  Bedlam, 
'  But  eminent    men  ever    seem,'  thought  I,  '  absurd    to  pro- 

saical  dullards.' 


41 8  PLATEN'S  POEMS. 

Damon  promises  Schmuhl  his  good  offices,  and 
the  first  act  closes  with  a  parabasis,  a  feature  of  the 
Old  Attic  comedy  of  which  Platen  makes  free  use. 
In  the  parabasis  the  poet  speaks  to  the  public 
through  the  leader  of  the  chorus,  and  drops  all 
disguise  of  his  own  views.  The  parabases  of  Ari 
stophanes  are  among  the  most  brilliant  continuous 
passages  of  his  plays,  and  Platen  bestowed  especial 
labor  and  thought  on  these  satirical  expectorations. 
In  this  play  it  is,  of  course,  Schmuhl  that  throws 
aside  his  false  beard  and  his  cloak  and  holds  forth 
in  the  name  of  the  poet,  against  the  state  of  the 
German  stage.  We  translate  a  few  lines  : 

Yes,  my  verses  dare  to  blame  you,  blame  you  roundly  too  at 

that, 

For  your  judgment  so  uncertain,  for  your  taste  so  false,  so  flat. 
You  applaud  the  mediocre,  merely  suffer  what  is  grand, 
Till  you've  almost  driven  all  that  is  not  brainless  from  the 

land. 

Till  your  marrowless  and  boneless  public  only  craves  as  food 
What  is  pulp  of  its  own  pulpy,  mushy  frog-molluscitude.1 
You,  too,  poets  tragic,  comic,  any  who  would  undertake 
Something  great,  I  bid  remember  that  your  life  must  be  the 

stake. 

Do  you  wish  to  get  the  laurel  ?     Then  you  must  not  hurry  on 
In  the  morning  to  your  office,  go  at  night  to  Helicon. 
Art  says  :  I  will  yield  me  wholly  if  you  wholly  yield  to  me, 
With  a  greater  love  of  freedom  than  a  dread  of  poverty. 

This  entire  consecration  to  art  is  a  favorite  theme 
with  our  poet,  and  he  felt  keenly  enough  even  the 
slight  restrictions  to  which  he  was  himself  subjected. 

1  Froschmolluskenbreinatur. 


PLATEN'S  POEMS.  419 

The  second  act  of  the  '  Fateful  Fork  '  discovers 
Mopsus  soliloquizing  about  the  desirable  fertility  of 
his  ideal  plantation  on  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope  and 
the  undesirable  fecundity  of  his  real  wife  in  Arcadia. 
As  he  is  meditating  the  expediency  of  sending  his 
six  pair  of  twins  to  the  Foundling  Hospital,  he  is 
interrupted  by  Phyllis  with  a  demand  for  house 
keeping  money,  a  demand  unwelcome  at  any  time 
to  any  husband,  but  especially  to  Mopsus,  whose 
temper  has  been  soured  by  his  repeated  failures 
to  find  the  hidden  treasure  of  his  ancestress.  His 
ironical  refusal  leaves  Phyllis  in  a  rage,  and  of  this 
rage  the  tempter  is  not  slow  to  avail  himself,  and 
Sirmio,  who  has  overheard  the  conversation  between 
Damon  and  Schmuhl,  comes  in  to  make  coarse  love 
to  Phyllis  and  to  propose  an  elopement  with  the 
treasure.  His  proposition  is  accepted  with  little 
coyness,  but  while  the  red-headed  gallant  is  engaged 
in  unearthing  the  casket,  Mopsus  returns,  and  in 
spite  of  the  representations  of  his  wife,  enters  the 
house.  In  anticipation  of  the  discovery  of  her  lover 
and  the  stolen  goods,  Phyllis  breaks  out  into  the 
following  strain : 

O  cosmical  woe  !  O  fatefullest  day — 

He  is  gone — he'll  discover  the  gold — poor  me  ! 

And  the  carrot-head  chap  ! 

And  he'll  worry  my  chap,  and  he'll  conquer  the  gold, 
And  he'll  seize  with  the  right  hand — the  savage — the  scalp 
Of  my  lover — alack  !  and  the  left  all  the  while 

Will  be  greedily  clutching  the  ducats. 

Ha  !  shall  I  indeed  vouchsafe  him  such  luck 

And  abandon  such  treasures  and  tresses  at  once — 

My  ducats  and  duck  ? 
Ne'er  shall  it  take  place  !     Ne'er  shall  it  take  place  ! 


420  PLATEN'S  POEMS. 

Or  first  shall  return  and  destroy  our  world, 
The  Titanical  brood  and  infinite  Night, 
And  Chaos  that  ruled  the  beginning  ! 

But  how  shall  I  save  It  for  Him  and  for  Me  ? 
A  terrible  project  starts  up  in  my  soul — 

A  most  horrible  wish — 
O  Medea  !  thy  form  is  so  present  to  me, 
With  thy  great  heart  stabbing  thy  serpent-race, 
Then  darting  aloft  to  the  welkin  amain, 

In  a  coach  with  a  tandem  of  dragons. 

Mistress  Judith,  however,  was  saucier  still  ; 
Holofernes  ascended  her  bridal  bed, 

Yet  had  she  the  bag 

Already  prepared  for  her  consort's  head  ; 
And  I  methinks  for  money  may  do, 
And  for  Sirmio's  sake,  what  Judith  did 

For  the  sake  of  a  parcel  of  Hebrews. 

Only  Sirmio  must  know  nothing  of  this, 
For  his  bosom  is  still  but  childish  and  soft ; 

Yet  shall  my  lord 

Be  despatch'd  this  night  to  his  long,  long  home, 
And  the  two-tined  fork  of  the  family  tree 
Shall  pierce  my  husband's  insatiable  breast, 

Like  unto  the  breast  of  a  roast  goose. 

Detected  in  his  attempt  to  appropriate  the  casket, 
Sirmio  is  ignominiously  hustled  out  of  the  house 
by  Mopsus,  but  not  before  he  had  made  an  appoint 
ment  with  his  mistress,  who  is  packed  off  by  her 
husband  with  as  little  ceremony  as  he  had  packed 
off  her  lover.  Now  left  alone,  Mopsus  meditates  on 
the  uses  to  which  he  will  put  his  treasure-trove,  and 
groans  over  the  expensiveness  of  wife  and  children. 
The  project  of  murdering  the  whole  batch  is  begin 
ning  to  dawn  in  his  soul  when  Schmuhl  enters  on  a 
reconnoitering  expedition.  The  sly  pedlar  repre 
sents  himself  as  a  traveller  fresh  from  the  Cape  of 


PLATEN'S  POEMS.  421 

Good  Hope  ;  and  a  plantation  on  the  Cape  of  Good 
Hope  being  all  Mopsus'  desire,  Schmuhl  is  urged 
to  give  a  description  of  that  favored  region,  which 
he  does  somewhat  after  this  fashion  : 

The  Cape  of  Good  Hope  is  the  land  of  Cocagne  and  the  coun 
try  of  pleasure  and  plenty, 

Where  the  soil  is  like  velvet,  the  heavens  like  glass,  and  the 
clouds  are  as  flakelets  of  purple  ; 

And  the  sun — how  he  smiles  with  unceasing  light !  Yet  shad 
owy  vaults  are  extended 

From  bosket  to  bosket,  from  tree  unto  tree,  and  the  roses 
incline  to  each  other, 

And  the  foliage  bourgeons  forever,  and  there  the  paroquets 
swarm  and  the  pheasants, 

And  the  peacock  stalks  through  the  silvery  sand,  proud  spread 
ing  his  golden-eyed  circlet, 

And  the  swan  dives  down,  and  the  humming-bird  sleeps  in  the 
flaming  cup  of  the  tulips, 

And  the  terebinth  spices  the  pregnant  air  and  the  jessamine's 
delicate  fragrance, 

And  the  aloe  blossoms,  while  round  unfold  the  gigantic  fans  of 
the  palm-tree, 

And  the  fountain  fills  in  its  ceaseless  sport  alabaster  basins 
with  gold  foam. 

Soft  prattles  around  the  melodious  wave,  and  the  flute's  sweet 
murmuring  rises, 

Dispersed  by  the  wind  in  its  gentle  approach  with  a  train  of 
balsamical  odors, 

Which  shakes  from  the  limb  in  its  gracious  advance  the  golden 
ball  of  the  orange, 

And  the  cooling  fruit  of  pomegranate  withal,  for  the  future 
thirster  providing. 

No  pain  torments  in  that  happy  land  and  the  bitterest  pang  is 
a  love-sigh  : 

Friend  leaneth  on  friend  in  a  close  embrace,  nor  dread  they  a 
coming  divorcement ; 

And  the  ivy  entwines  its  unfading  wreath  in  the  waving  locks 
of  the  poet. 

Old  age  and  Death  are  the  only  lies,  and  they  call  the  Impos 
sible  Real. 


422  PLATEN'S  POEMS. 

Transported  by  this  description,  Mopsus  pro 
poses  that  they  should  at  once  betake  themselves 
to  that  promised  land,  and  intimates  that  means 
would  not  be  wanting  for  the  long  journey. 
Schmuhl  begins  to  suspect  that  Mopsus  had  found 
the  casket,  and  closes  the  act  with  another  parabasis, 
from  which  we  extract  the  portion  that  relates  to 
Kotzebue,  once  the  most  popular  dramatic  writer 
in  Europe,  whose  '  Stranger '  still  keeps  the  stage, 
whose  '  Pizarro '  is  still  remembered. 

Why,  Public  dear,  is  genius  so  ill-appreciated, 

And  poets  sent  to  Coventry  who  once  were  celebrated  ? 

So  Kotzebue,  I  hear,  with  you  has  got  into  miscredit, 

Who,  if  man  ever  had  the  stage,  indubitably  had  it. 

You  clapped  his  men  and  women  too,  you  liked  each  witticism, 

He  was  the  poet  to  your  taste,  above  all  criticism. 

The  Muses  nine  for  you  might  go  to  grass  with  that  Apollo ; 

On  every  stage,  in  every  barn,  he  beat  all  others  hollow. 

No  poet  boasts  of  such  success  ;  and  so  no  longer  linger, 

But  crown  the  German  ^Eschylus,  the  nation's  greatest  singer  ! 

He  blacked  his  sheets  as  men  black  boots,  with  ease  that  was 

terrific, 

And  Calderon — nay,  Lope's  self  was  hardly  more  prolific. 
'Tis  true  he  seldom  wrote  in  verse,  but  that's  110  harm,  as  you 

know, 
You  are  but  mortal ;  would  you  hear  the  tongue  of  Jove  and 

Juno  ? 
He  talked  like  you  ;  that  suited  you  ;  and  so  as  not  to  wound 

you, 

His  characters  were  chosen  from  nonentities  around  you. 
And  you  this  Kotzebue  of  yours  have  not  yet  quite  forsaken ; 
He's  dead,  but  still  his  progeny  it  is  his  place  have  taken. 
The  lawyer  man  of  Weissenfels1  with  all  his  crew  's  descended 
From  him,   for  like    him,    they   are    dull    as   men,    as   poets 

splendid. 

1  Milliner. 


PLATEN'S   POEMS.  423 

In  the  third  act  the  knot  of  the  action  is  drawn 
tighter.  Phyllis  attempts  to  stab  Mopsus  with  the 
Fateful  Fork  just  as  Mopsus  is  on  the  way  to  put 
an  end  to  her ;  and  as  she  sees  him  she  utters  the 
pious  wish  : 

O  would  I  had  studied  anatomy  well 
When  I  was  a  girl,  for  then  I  should  know  where  the  blow 

would  prove  the  most  fatal. 
Where,  where  is  the  heart?  on  the  right?    on  the  left?  that 

the  stab  may  not  fall  on  his  stomach, 
For  his  stomach  digests  so  infernally  well  that  the  fork  would 

itself  be  digested. 

But  as  Phyllis  raises  the  Fateful  Fork  to  deal 
the  fatal  blow,  Salome  appears  in  thunder  and 
lightning,  and  Phyllis  drops  the  fork,  which  Mop 
sus  takes  up  at  the  bidding  of  his  ancestress, 
and,  inspired  by  her,  prepares  his  soul  to  commit  a 
baker's  dozen  of  murders.  In  these  bloody  mus 
ings  he  is  disturbed  by  Schmuhl,  who  climbs  over 
the  garden  wall  and  finds  to  his  disgust  that 
Mopsus  has  really  discovered  the  treasure,  so  that 
there  is  nothing  left  for  him  but  to  offer  his  services 
as  travelling  companion.  These  services  are  ac 
cepted,  and  while  Mopsus  goes  in  to  bid  his  wife  and 
children  good-bye,  Schmuhl,  as  usual,  pours  out  the 
poet's  soul  to  the  public — this  time  in  beautiful  ottava 
rima — which  we  dare  not  attempt  to  reproduce. 

In  the  fourth  act  Mopsus  appears  before  his 
house.  He  has  murdered  his  wife  and  his  zodiac 
of  children,  and  now  deliberates  with  Schmuhl  as 
to  the  disguise  which  he  is  to  assume.  Schmuhl 
proposes  at  first  the  part  of  a  bagman,  then  a  musi 
cian,  then  an  actor,  then  a  journeyman,  and  finally 


424  PLATEN'S  POEMS. 

an  Englishwoman,  which  last  strikes  the  fastidious 
fancy  of  Mopsus.  At  the  sound  of  footsteps,  the 
two  confederates  withdraw,  and  Damon,  J.  P., 
enters.  While  he  goes  into  the  house  to  look  for 
Schmuhl,  Sirmio  comes  singing  to  the  rendezvous. 
But  scarcely  has  the  joyous  song  died  on  his  lips, 
when  the  Justice  rushes  out  of  the  house,  fork  in 
hand  and  dismay  on  his  countenance.  Sirmio  enters 
the  house  to  see  what  is  the  cause  of  the  dismay, 
and  Damon  tells  us  : 

Lord  !  my  limbs  are  all  a-tremble  !     Was  it  Schmuhl  ?      The 

case  is  solemn  : 

I  should  hardly  like  to  see  a  college  friend  suspens.  per  collum, 
Who  sat  by  me  in  the  moral  lecture-room  and  slumbered  in  it ; 
But  the  best  of  people  sometimes  may  forget  themselves  a 

minute. 
Still  this   crime  was    too   momentous    for    a   paltry   minute's 

ticking  ; 

Hour  after  hour  was  needed  for  this  awful  lot  of  sticking. 
But  still  may  I  not  defend  him  ?    What's  the  use  of  all  my  study  ? 
May  it  not  be  said  the  thing's  a  joke  albeit  somewhat  bloody  ? 
That  the  children  were  but  changelings,  fittingly  annihilated, 
And  that  forks  as  deadly  weapons  nowhere  are  enumerated  ? 
Even  Raupach  in  his  dramas  does  not  use  them  for  impaling ; 
Then  who  knows  but  venesection  with  these  children  was  a 

failing  ? 
May  not  blood  of  internecine  fight  for  bread  and  butter  stain 

them? 
May  they  not  have  had  ideas  and  have  perished  to  maintain 

them? 

Furthermore,  is  death  an  evil  ?  Is  it  nothing  but  destruction  ? 
Can  the  best  of  men  do  better  than  to  die,  by  strict  induction  ? 

While  Damon  is  thus  thinking  how  to  deliver 
his  friend  from  the  meshes  of  justice,  Sirmio  rushes 
out  and  charges  the  crime  on  his  master,  whose 
thoughts  are  thus  disagreeably  diverted  from 


PLATEN'S  POEMS.        .  42$ 

Schmuhl  to  himself,  and  unable  to  appease  the 
righteous  indignation  of  Sirmio  by  giving  up  the 
treasure,  in  his  despair  he  resolves  on  flight.  As 
Sirmio  raises  the  hue  and  cry  of  Thief!  and  Murder ! 
Damon  falls  into  the  following  gloomy  reflections  : 

Diabolical  fate  that  has  brought  me  here  at  the  most  unfor 
tunate  moment ! 
How  can  I  escape  ?    How  can  I  avert  the  suspicion  that  speaks 

so  distinctly  ? 
I'll  take  to  my  heels,  for  by  rare  good  luck  I'm  near  the  Ar- 

cadiaii  frontier — 
But  ah  !  on  foot,  and  alas  !    no  cash,  and  alackaday  !  lacking 

in  credit, 
How  shall  I  prolong  that  thing  called  life  by  physiological 

scholars? 

Perhaps  by  that  other  thing  that  is  called  by  police-commis 
sioners  begging. 
Ah  me  !  how  romantic  I  fancied  me  once  the  jocund  life  of  the 

beggars, 
All  free  from  business,  so  lazy  and  fat,  and  extorting  alms 

from  compassion, 
As  they  roved  all  careless  through  town  after  town,  through 

sunlit  village  and  hamlet, 
And  devoured  their  spoil  straightway,  and  retained  not  a  cent 

in  the  rags  of  their  pockets. 
Light-hearted  and  joyous,  I  thought,  they  would  rest  in  the 

flourishing  shade  of  the  lime-trees, 
And  there  the  most  serious  business  would  be  the  catching  of 

parasites  nimble. 
But  now  it  appears  an  oppressive  fate  to  be  begging  so  hotly 

for  coppers. 
Yet  I  must  be  gone,  gone,  gone,  gone,  gone,  or  they'll  chop  off 

my  head  from  my  shoulders ; 
But  when  I'm  away  they  may  nail  me  up  in  effigy  fast  to  the 

gallows, 
Just  as  soon  as  they  choose,  and  make  me  the  theme  for  a 

tragical  drama  in  German, 
And  the  people  will  praise  it,  although  they  possess  '  Pandora  ' 

and  '  Iphigenia  '. 


426  PLATEN'S   POEMS. 

The  sound  of  footsteps  frightens  Damon  off  in 
his  turn,  and  Schmuhl  and  Mopsus  enter  and  hold 
discourse  about  their  future  journey.  This  gives 
the  poet  occasion  to  deal  satirical  blows  at  the 
various  literary  towns  of  Germany,  and  the  usual 
parabasis  follows  in  glorification  of  the  author  and 
abuse  of  the  idols  of  the  people.  At  the  close  of 
the  act,  Platen  expresses  his  yearning  for  Italy : 

O  may  fate  but  grant  the  poet  that  for  which  his  bosom  glows, 
Refuge  in  a  land  where  art  aforetime  blossomed  like  the  rose, 
'Till  at  last  the  German  language  has  to  him  a  foreign  tone, 
Who  enriched  its  native  beauty  with  an  art  that  was  his  own. 
Then,  as  he  before  has  told  you,  then  he  hopes  that  he  may  die, 
Many  lances  in  his  bosom — Winkelried  of  poetry  ! 

The  fifth  act  opens  in  the  Inn  at  the  sign  of  the 
Golden  Fork.  The  landlord  soliloquizes  in  iambic 
trimeters,  which  in  Platen's  hands  are  not  alexan 
drines  : 

This  foreign  lady  is  suspicious  to  my  mind  ; 
She  talks  so  little  and  she  never  lifts  her  veil. 
She  m^y  be  rich,  nay,  if  her  valet  tells  the  truth, 
As  rich  as  gold ;  but  ugly  she  must  be  as  sin. 
Perhaps  'tis  something  even  worse  than  ugliness  : 
We  have  examples  in  these  latter  days  enough 
Of  travell'd  monkeys  and  orang-outangs  that  seek 
A  higher  culture,  and  attempt  the  author's  trade. 
Such  cattle  always  hide  their  faces  carefully, 
And,  like  reviewers,  keep  themselves  anonymous. 
Perhaps  the  lady  is  that  great  celebrity, 
The  pig-faced  princess  who  exhibited  herself 
Some  years  ago  in  Germany,  although  'tis  thought 
That  she  was  merely  meant  to  be  symbolical — 
An  incarnation  of  the  reigning  German  taste. 
For  what  is  common  passes  still  from  hand  to  hand  : 
Sublimity  never  can  hope  to  serve  as  currency. 


PLATEN'S  POEMS.  427 

And  yet  another  supposition  comes  to  me  : 
Perhaps  the  poor  good  lady's  mother  got  a  shock 
From  looking  at  a  radical,  and  brought  to  light 
Some  demagogue's  rhinocerotic  smeller-face,1 
A  paragon  of  never-ceasing  snuffledom. 

This  mental  darkness  of  mine  host  is  in  no  way 
enlightened  by  Schmuhl,  who  appears  at  this  point, 
but  only  to  throw  additional  obscurity  about 
the  subject,  and  leaves  the  landlord  to  additional 
conjectures,  which  we  cannot  translate  without  dis 
gusting  the  English  reader.  Scenes  like  that  at  the 
opening  of  the  '  Peace '  of  Aristophanes  are  even 
more  to  the  German  taste  than  they  were  to  the 
Greek.  Tired  of  musing,  the  landlord  is  about  to 
go  to  bed,  when  a  new  guest  asks  shelter — our 
friend,  the  Justice  of  the  Peace,  who  has  fled  from 
the  prosecution  of  his  ungracious  subordinate, 
Sirmio.  '  The  chambers  are  all  full/  says  the  land 
lord,  '  but  you  can  have  a  sofa  in  the  parlor.  Only 
you  must  not  snore  too  loud,  for  the  richest  lady 
in  the  world  sleeps  next  door.  Here  lies  her 
casket,  chokefull  of  gold  ;  but  that  is  a  mere  trifle 
in  comparison  with  the  rest  of  her  wealth.'  As 
Damon  is  settling  himself  for  a  night's  rest  on  the 
sofa,  his  mouth  begins  to  water  for  the  British  gold, 
and  he  resolves  to  enter  the  lady's  chamber  and 
rob  her,  and  if  need  be,  stab  her  with  the  Fateful 
Fork  which  he  has  still  on  his  person.  But  before 
he  can  go  in  Mopsus  comes  out,  haunted  by  the 
sense  of  guilt.  At  the  sight  of  Damon  with  the 
Fateful  Fork  in  his  hand,  Mopsus  knows  that  his 
time  has  come,  and  he  calls  on  the  Justice  to  stab 
home ;  but  Damon  has  not  the  courage,  and  hands 

1  Demagogenriechernashornangesicht. 


428  PLATEN'S   POEMS. 

the  fork  to  Mopsus,  who  inflicts  on  himself  the 
fatal  blow.  The  whole  house  is  raised,  and 
Schmuhl  and  Damon  begin  to  quarrel  about  the 
treasure.  Mopsus  dies.  The  lid  of  the  casket 
opens  and  Salome  appears,  surrounded  with  a  halo 
of  glory,  proclaims  her  liberation  from  the  curse, 
and  vanishes.  This  ends  the  play  and  leaves 
Schmuhl  to  add  as  epilogue  a  final  parabasis,  in 
which  the  poet  praises  his  own  production  with 
out  reserve,  after  the  manner  of  the  ancients. 

Such  is  an  outline  of  the  '  Fateful  Fork  '.  Critics 
may  say  that  it  is  poor  in  character,  and  that  Platen 
took  refuge  in  the  Aristophanic  form  because  he  felt 
that  he  was  not  equal  to  the  creation  of  real  beings. 
But  the  piece  is  to  be  judged  by  its  aim  ;  and 
though  the  author  showed  no  little  vanity  when  he 
said  that  the  '  Fateful  Fork  '  was  his  introduction  to 
the  circle  of  the  Immortals,  his  vanity,  in  view  of 
the  admirable  finish  of  his  work,  is  pardonable. 

That  this  vanity  of  Platen's  was  not  of  that  fatal 
kind  which  makes  many  authors  satisfied  with  a 
mere  repetition  of  themselves,  is  shown  by  his  next 
dramatic  work,  '  The  Romantic  CEdipus ',  a  play 
composed  to  ridicule  the  Romantic  school.  It  ex 
hibits  an  increasing  command  of  language  and  a 
wider  range  of  thought ;  and  the  plot  is  constructed 
with  great  ingenuity  to  bring  out  the  false  sublime 
of  the  modern  drama.  Indeed,  Goethe  said  that 
Platen  might  have  been  a  great  tragic  poet  if  he  had 
not  forestalled  success  by  ridiculing  the  elements 
of  success. 

The  '  Romantic  CEdipus '  reminds  us  somewhat  of 
Sheridan's  '  Critic  '.  It  is  a  play  within  a  play  ;  but 


PLATEN'S  POEMS.  429 

in  the  '  CEdipus '  the  criticisms  precede  and  follow 
the  interlude,  and  do  not  come  in  as  a  running  com 
mentary  ;  and  it  is  perhaps  better  thus,  for  running 
commentaries  of  this  character,  however  amusing 
they  may  be,  are  apt  to  irritate  the  reader  by  dis 
tracting  his  attention  and  anticipating  his  own 
reflections.  The  hero  of  the  comedy  proper  is  one 
Nimmermann,  a  transparent  pseudonym  for  Im- 
mermann,  whose  epigram  on  the  '  Gaselen  '  Platen 
never  forgave.  Let  us  call  him  '  Nevermind '. 
The  other  persons  are  Mr.  Public,  a  traveller,  and 
Mr.  Goodsense  (Verstand),  an  exile.  The  chorus 
is  formed  by  the  '  Haidschnucken ' — the  popular 
appellation  of  a  desperately  mean  breed  of  sheep — 
and  the  scene  is  laid  in  the  desolate  moorland 
where  those  sheep  are  kept — the  infamous  Lunen- 
burg  heath.  Enter  the  Public  : 

PUBLIC. 

This  is  the  heath  of  Lunenburg,  a  lovely  spot, 
To  which  Fame's  trumpet  has  allured  me  from  afar, 
For  here,  they  say,  a  famous  verse-smith  roams  about 
And  blows  romantic  bellows  always  night  and  day. 
Yet  far  and  wide  there's  naught  poetic  I  espy, 
Save  haply  in  the  foreground  here  a  flock  of  beasts. 

CHORUS. 
Who  are  you,  stranger  ?     Be  more  modest  in  your  tone. 

PUBLIC. 

What  ?    Can  you  speak?    What  ?    Do  we  live  in  yKsop's  time  ? 
If  you  were  horses  I  could  then  rest  satisfied, 
For  Homer,  if  I  err  not,  makes  his  horses  talk. 

CHORUS. 

Fie  !   /Esop,  Homer  !     Keep  away  from  all  that's  Greek, 
For  Homer  was  a  blind  man  ;  ./Esop's  back  was  hunched  : 
We  serve  no  cripple  ! 


430  PLATEN'S  POEMS. 

PUBLIC. 
Tell  me,  who's  the  man  you  serve  ? 

CHORUS. 
Why,  Nevermind. 

PUBLIC. 

What !  Nevermind  ?     And  is  it  true 
That  bombast-pickling  offspring  of  the  sacred  Nine, 
The  German  Shakespeare,  lives  and  moves  among  the  sheep — 
I'm  all  amazement  ! 

CHORUS. 

Why? 

PUBLIC. 
Who  would  have  thought  of  that  ? 

CHORUS. 

What,  that  an  able  man  like  him  should  pasture  sheep  ? 
Why  did  not  Paris,  whom  Olympians  themselves 
Of  old  gave  office  as  an  umpire,  pasture  sheep  ? 
Did  not  Adonis  ?     And  what  else  should  occupy 
His  leisure  moments  in  this  lone  sequestered  spot  ? 

PUBLIC. 

To  speak  my  mind,  he  might  play  executioner. 

I  read  his  play  «  Cardenio  '  in  ecstasy, 

The  greatest  piece  of  o'er-disgusting  butchery 

The  fat  frog  bombast  ever  spawned  to  fructify 

Poetic  frenzy's  reeking  jack-o'-lantern  swamp  ; 

For  that  is  what  the  critics  tell  me  of  the  piece. 

But  just  the  things  that  have  displeased  the  critics  so, 

To  me  appear  ecstatic,  and  I've  hither  flown 

To  shake  his  hand,  and  beg  you  tell  me  where  he  is. 

In  reply  to  this  question,  the  Chorus  excuses  the 
poet  for  his  temporary  retirement  by  describing  the 
operation  of  the  '  CEdipus  Tyrannus  '  of  Sophocles 
on  the  system  of  the  German  Shakespeare.  Never- 


PLATEN'S  POEMS.  431 

mind  had  been  reading  the  '  QEdipus  ',  but  wearied 
of  its  flatness, 

He  hurl'd  the  book  into  the  heather,  and  exclaimed  : 

So  this  is  what  you  people  call  a  masterpiece — 

The  tragic  canon  of  your  famous  Stagirite — 

Poor  pedants  all  !     Now  I  will  make  an  CEdipus 

Myself,  and  show  you  how  that  fellow  Sophocles 

His  splendid  subject  should  have  handled  and  produced 

An  acting  drama,  all  complete  from  A  to  Z, 

A  fine  historical,  family-murder  tragedy. 

That  other  piece  is  but  a  fragment.     Where's  the  breadth 

So  absolutely  needed  in  a  tragedy  ? 

And  where  the  extra-supernumeraries  ?     Where 

Attendants,  fools  and  little  babies,  abigails, 

Tide-waiters,  toadies,  tumblers,  pedlars,  prostitutes, 

Horse-jockeys,  cowards,  catch-polls,  clerks  of  court,  and  all 

The  rabble  rout  of  modern  plays  ?     And  tell  me  where 

The  frequent  change  of  scenery  ?     And  where,  O  where 

Freischtitz-hydraulic-pyrotechiiicalities  P1 

And  where's  the  comic  element  ?     And  where,  O  where 

Anachronism's  artless  aid  ?     Nor  can  I  find 

Gross  blunders  in  geography,  and  other  bulls, 

Nor  hobbling  schoolboy  verses,  nor  the  flowery  stuff 

The  public  always  takes  to  be  the  height  of  style. 

After  a  while  Nevermind  himself  appears  and  is 
introduced  to  the  Public.  The  usual  interchange 
of  compliments  ensues,  and  Nevermind  says  : 

'Tis  true  that  I  am  not  a  Mullner,  who,  as  soon 
As  any  stranger  puts  his  foot  within  his  door, 
Begins  to  talk  about  the  children  of  his  brain ; 
Yet  I  must  tell  you  frankly  and  without  reserve, 
I'm  working  at  no  ordinary  masterpiece. 

PUBLIC. 
As  always.     But  vouchsafe  me  more  particulars. 

1  Freischutzcascadeiifeuerwerkmaschinerie. 


432  PLATEAUS  POEMS. 

NEVERMIND. 

But  first  I  must  investigate  your  real  belief. 
What  say  you  to  the  'CEdipus  '  of  Sophocles  ? 

PUBLIC. 

I  read  it  in  my  boyhood  when  I  was  at  school — 
A  failure — in  my  judgment. 

NEVERMIND. 
Nay,  a  botch-work  quite, 

Beyond  compare.     The  theme  is  highly  tragical, 
Rife  with  all  kinds  of  horror,  incest,  parricide, 
The  Sphinx,  the  plague,  misunderstandings  and  mistakes, 
And  complications  numberless.     How  little  use 
Of  all  these  fearful  elements  the  poet  makes  ! 
He  has  actually  ejected  all  that's  horrible, 
O'er-veiled  in  pretty  language  every  turpitude, 
The  grand  effect  annihilated,  from  the  list 
Of  dramatis  personae  struck  the  Sphinx — the  one 
Best  calculated  to  affect  the  public. 

PUBLIC. 

Yes; 

For  wholly  groundless  is  the  rule  the  critics  give, 
That  tragic  art  the  hidden  powers  of  hell  discards, 
And  only  bears  the  passions'  pure  humanity. 

NEVERMIND. 

But  do  you  know  the  cardinal  mistake  that  spoils 
That  wretched  piece  ? 

PUBLIC. 

I  do  not. 

NEVERMIND. 

Don't  you  recollect 
The  Sphinx's  riddle  ? 

PUBLIC. 

Yes,  of  course.     She  says  :  What  is 
The  thing  that  goes  on  four  feet  early  in  the  day, 
On  two  at  mid-day,  and  at  eventide  on  three  ? 


PLATEN'S   POEMS.  433 

NEVERMIND. 

The  answer  is  :  Man.     Now,  I  admit,  the  poet  lets 
His  hero  walk  on  two  feet  in  his  manhood's  prime  ; 
Nay,  when  he  blinds  him,  I  must  still  concede  he  gives 
A  staff  to  act  as  third  foot.     But  in  all  the  piece 
Where  does  he  show  him  crawling  on  all  fours,  I  pray  ? 

PUBLIC. 
O  what  acumen  ! 

NEVERMIND. 

Thus  has  Sophocles  himself 

Destroyed  his  hero's  much  extolled  '  humanity  ' — 
For,  as  he  never  goes  on  four  feet,  CEdipus 
Is  either  not  a  man  himself,  or  else  he  failed 
To  guess  the  riddle,  and  in  such  a  case  deserved 
Destruction  at  the  Sphinx's  claws. 

PUBLIC. 

O  how  profound  ! 

To  show  how  far  Sophocles  has  fallen  short  of 
the  true  requirements  of  the  tragic  art,  Nevermind 
has  himself  treated  the  theme  in  accordance  with 
the  Romantic  standard,  and  the  next  three  acts  are 
taken  up  with  the  interlude  of  the  '  CEdipus  ',  which 
gives  the  name  to  the  entire  piece.  We  presume 
that  every  reader  is  familiar  with  the  story  of  QEdi- 
pus,  and  that  it  is  not  necessary  for  us  to  tell  how 
the  exposed  son  of  Laius  and  Jocasta  unwittingly 
slew  his  father  and  married  his  mother,  and  how  he 
went  forth  from  the  land  he  had  saved,  an  exile  in 
self-inflicted  blindness.  Nor  have  we  the  space  to 
exhibit  here — if  it  were  necessary — the  wonderful 
articulation  of  the  great  play  of  Sophocles,  which 
seems  to  have  grown  rather  than  to  have  been 
made ;  which,  once  studied,  makes  every  other 


434  PLATEN' 'S  POEMS. 

representation  of  the  legend  appear  unnatural ;  and 
which,  a  hundred  times  studied,  reveals  a  hundred 
new  and  subtle  beauties  at  every  fresh  examination. 
But  even  those  who  do  not  know  the  story  may  learn 
it  from  an  outline  of  Platen's  plot,  and  even  those 
who  cannot  contrast  the  fair  image  of  the  Greek 
poem  with  this  caricature  of  the  Romantic  school, 
may  find  some  amusement  in  the  intrinsic  absurdity 
of  the  '  Romantic  QEdipus  '. 

The  play  begins  almost  ab  ovo.  The  scene  is  in 
the  palace  at  Thebes.  Jocasta  and  the  midwives 
are  discussing  the  approaching  event.  Everything 
is  in  readiness  :  the  forceps,  the  horoscope,  the 
caudle.  Seven  hundred  caps  lie  in  the  basket  and 
seven  hundred  cock-horses  are  stabled  in  the  ward 
robe.  A  birch-rod  peeps  out  from  behind  the 
mirror,  and  educational  works,  some  thousand  in 
number,  are  ranged  in  the  library.  But  while 
recapitulating  these  indispensable  articles,  the  gos 
sips  are  startled  by  the  apparition  of  a  bat,  which 
alights  upon  the  head  of  the  queen  and  becomes 
entangled  in  her  hair.  This  evil  omen  excites  great 
apprehension  and  fervent  deprecation,  in  the  midst 
of  which  the  queen  is  seized  by  the  pangs  of  labor. 

We  are  now  in  the  palace  at  Corinth.  Diagoras, 
who  is  the  lover  of  Zelinda,  who  is  the  wife  of 
Polybus,  who  is  the  king  of  Corinth,  is  discovered 
imploring  his  hard-hearted  mistress  for  pity. 
Thirty  years  he  has  sought  her  favor  and  sought  it 
in  vain.  He  is  fifty,  she  sixty,  and  yet  she  refuses 
him  the  first  look  of  love,  and  resolutely  keeps  her 
self  within  the  bounds  of  Platonic  affection,  although 
her  husband  is  a  tyrant  who  is  ever  reproaching 


PLATEN'S  POEMS.  435 

her  with  her  childlessness.  At  last  Diagoras,  worn 
out  with  efforts  to  reduce  that  ancient  fortress,  bids 
her  an  eternal  farewell. 

Fare  thee  well  !    and  let  me  perish.     Still  to  Polybus  be  true  : 
Sooner  would  a  dripping  hay-cock  break  into  a  flame  than  you. 
Yonder,  yonder  will  I  perish,  where  I  saw  you  first,  my  love, 
Where  the  green  trees  ever  rustle,  where  the  breezes  ever  rove, 
On  Cithaeron's  lofty  summit  where,  a  maiden  fancy-free, 
You  were  hunting  through  the  forest  with  your  skirts  above 

your  knee. 
Spring  was  come  with  blooming  myrtles ;  swelling  brooklets 

roared,  and  ah  ! 
Nightingales  were  plaining  sadly  and  the  lambkins  bleating 

baa. 
'Neath  a  pine-tree  you  were  lying  with  your  quiver  'neath  your 

head, 

Round  about  your  faithful  beagles,  at  your  side  a  hoopoe  dead. 
And  I  took  you  for  a  goddess,  as  you  slept,  and  did  not  dare 
Wake  you  up,  but  gazed  upon  your  face  with  long-continued 

stare. 

Then  I  caught  me  a  mosquito,  and  I  set  the  game  I  got 
On  your  nose's  very  tip  end,  where  you  have  a  scarlet  spot. 
You  awoke,  but  in  a  passion.     «  O  forgive  ',  I  stammered  out, 
And  I  felt  my  forehead,  thinking  that  Actaeon's  horns  would 

sprout. 
But  you  smiled :  '  I'm  not  Diana.'     Then  with  half-offended 

tone , 

*  I  am  chaster,  for  I  never,  never  met  Endymion. 
If  your  love  is  but  Platonic,  it  shall  not  be  disallowed  : 
Fleeting  is  the  vulgar  passion,  fleeting  as  the  passing  cloud  ; 
For  the  cloud  is  all  inconstant — now  'tis  red,  to-morrow  grey, 
Ever  rising,  ever  falling,  till  it  pass  in  tears  away.' 
Thus  you  spoke,  and  well  I  noted  every  word  and  every  look, 
And  to-day  that  pine  shall  be  my  gallows-tree  by  hook  or  crook. 

ZELINDA. 
As  you  choose  ! 

DIAGORAS. 
Ah  !  cruel  creature.     Has  it  come  to  such  a  pass  ? 


436  PLATEN'S  POEMS. 

ZELINDA. 

Yes  ! 

DlAGORAS. 

Then,  fare  thee  well,  Zelinda.  (Exit.} 

ZELINDA. 

Fare  thee  well,  Diagoras. 

I  am  sorry  for  the  fellow,  but  his  anguish  can't  be  healed  ; 
Perish  half  a  dozen  like  him  ere  my  lofty  virtue  yield. 

We  return  to  Thebes.  Jocasta  refuses  to  show 
Laius  his  new-born  son,  who  is  marked  on  the 
breast  with  a  bat.  Laius  makes  light  of  this  mis 
fortune,  but  Tiresias  the  seer  bursts  in  with  horror 
in  his  countenance  and  a  horoscope  in  his  hand. 
The  stars  predict  that  this  infant  will  murder  his 
father  and  marry  his  mother.  Melchior,  a  servant, 
is  ordered  to  cast  the  child  to  the  wild  beasts  of 
Cithaeron,  whither  we  too  are  transported  to  find 
Diagoras  walking  about  and  soliloquizing  of  his 
luckless  love  and  intended  self-murder.  Diagoras 
lies  down  and  takes  a  nap  by  way  of  preparing 
himself  for  a  longer  sleep,  and  Melchior  enters 
bearing  the  infant  CEdipus,  whose  fate  he  bemoans. 
He  then  binds  the  child  to  the  limb  of  a  tree  and 
leaves  him  to  the  tender  mercies  of  Diagoras,  who 
is  roused  by  his  cries.  Overjoyed  at  the  sight, 
Diagoras  takes  the  child  in  his  arms  and  hurries  to 
Corinth,  where  he  tells  Zelinda  of  his  treasure- 
trove,  and  makes  a  present  of  the  infant  to  the 
childless  queen.  This  chaste  lady,  instead  of 
showing  her  lover  any  favor,  expresses  her  suspi 
cion  that  this  is  a  love-child  which  Diagoras  desires 
to  foist  upon  his  mistress  ;  and  while  she  accepts 
the  gift,  banishes  the  giver  from  her  presence  for 


PLATENS  POEMS.  437 

the  space  of  thirty  years.  As  Diagoras  vanishes, 
Polybus  enters,  and  Zelinda — a  second  Sarah,  as 
she  calls  herself — presents  him  with  QEdipus,  a 
gift  which  he  regards  with  just  suspicion.  In  con 
nection  with  this  miraculous  birth  he  narrates  the 
celebrated  story  of  the  snow-child,  begotten  in  the 
husband's  absence  by  a  flake  of  snow,  and  disap 
pearing  at  a  later  day  when  exposed  to  the  rays  of 
a  tropical  sun ;  l  and  not  satisfied  with  this,  he 
threatens  further  to  murder  Zelinda  if  she  prove 
not  her  innocence.  She  defers  the  proof  until  the 
return  of  Diagoras,  and  leaves  the  stage  with  all  the 
dignity  of  an  injured  wife;  but  Polybus  remains  for 
a  moment  to  inform  us  that  he  is  sinking  shafts  for 
the  arsenic  that  is  to  kill  Diagoras  thirty  Easters 
hence. 

In  Thebes  again,  where  Laius  relates  a  fearful 
dream  to  Jocasta,  and  declares  his  intention  to  seek 
an  explanation  of  the  vision  at  the  oracular  shrine 
of  Delphi.  But  Jocasta  being  a  lady  of  strong 
literary  tastes,  consoles  herself  with  the  prospect  of 
undisturbed  entertainment  with  her  two  court-poets 
— Kind  (Child — a  notorious  manufacturer  of  opera- 
texts)  and  Kindeskind  (Grandchild — an  invention 
of  Platen's). 

While  he's  absent,  with  my  poets  I  can  have  a  pleasant  time, 
I  can  make  a  Book  of  Beauties,  I  can  build  the  lofty  rhyme. 
O  !   I  read  just  now  in  Houwald  such  a  passage  !    Never  more 
Will  it  leave  my  memory's  chambers,  never  leave  my  bosom's 

core  ! 

In  a  tragedy — '  The  Foeman  '  is  the  title  of  the  piece — 
There's  a  queen  at  midnight,  wishing  day  to  come  and  night 

to  cease, 

1  Comp.  Cent  Nouvelles  Nouvelles,  No.  19. 


438  PLATEN'S  POEMS. 

And  she  says  what  I  am  certain  genius  alone  could  say  : 
'  I  should  like  to  be  thy  mother  that  I  might  awake  thee,  Day  !' ' 
What  a  daring  trope — how  worthy  of  a  being  on  the  throne — 
What  a  tender  wish  this  royal  female  utters  of  her  own  ! 
She  would  like  to  be  the  mother  of  the  Day — but  by  my  life, 
If  I  had  my  choice,  my  Houwald,  I  should  like  to  be  your  wife  ! 

Leaving  Jocasta  to  her  poets,  we  hurry  back  to 
Corinth  and  listen  to  the  complaint  of  Zelinda, 
who  leads  a  gloomy  life.  Her  friend  Diagoras  is 
banished,  her  husband  Polybus  spends  all  his  days 
in  the  Bureau  of  Mines,  unjust  suspicion  clouds 
her  character  and  she  is  desolate ;  and  now  her 
adopted  child  CEdipus  comes  in  to  annoy  her  with 
the  question  whether  he  is  a  bastard  or  not.  She 
refuses  to  answer  the  question,  and  he  resolves  to 
seek  a  solution  of  his  problem  at  the  Delphic 
oracle.  The  soliloquy  of  the  Pythoness  which 
follows  is  one  of  the  most  beautiful  passages  of  the 
play,  and  the  terza  rima  in  which  it  is  composed  is 
most  exquisitely  modulated.  We  have  dropped 
the  double  rhyme  in  our  version,  which  halts  but 
lamely  after  the  original. 

To  him  who  holds  me  to  this  tripod  bound, 
Unceasingly  my  sorrows  forth  I  pour, 
And  show  Apollo  every  bleeding  wound. 

1Dass  ich  ware  deine  Mutter  um  zu  wecken  dich,  o  Tag. 
Perhaps  neither  Houwald  nor  Platen  was  thinking  who  is  the 
mother  of  the  day.  In  Aesch.  Ag.  291,  it  is  a  being  on  the 
throne,  Clytaemnestra,  or,  as  we  must  say  now, 
that  says : 

TTJS    vvv   TfKoixrrjs  <j)£>s  ro§'    tv(f)p6vr)s 
Coinp.  Soph.  Trach.  95. — B.  L.  G. 


PLATEN'S  POEMS.  439 

This  fane  is  splendid — pillars  tall — a  door 
Of  fine  Corinthian  brass,  and  e'en  the  roof 
With  precious  glow  of  metal  cover'd  o'er  ; 

Yet  have  I  here  of  bliss  or  joy  made  proof  ? 
What  asker  ever  hath  his  thanks  expressed 
That  I  unrolled  the  Future's  purple  woof? 

I'm  grey  from  eld,  pale,  lean,  and  thus  unbless'd, 
How  could  I  taste  the  life-blood  of  the  vine, 
Or  how  on  downy  cushions  take  my  rest  ? 

The  roses  everywhere  their  stems  entwine  ; 
Love  sleeps  on  every  brooklet's  bank ;  but  I 
Know  Him  and  tremble  !     Such  a  lot  is  mine. 

And  now  that  all  my  hair  is  silvery, 

What  comfort  if,  li'ke  tempests  in  the  north, 

My  oracles  ring  out  resistlessly  ? 

There's  not  a  garland — no,  not  one  that  Earth 
Weaves  now  for  me  ;  and  many  would-be-wise 
As  story-telling  trickster  mock  me  forth. 

0  vulgar  rabble  that  I  quite  despise, 

That  lay  their  ban  on  every  word  I've  spoke, 
As  if  such  thoughts  as  theirs  to  mine  could  rise  ! 

Their  song  is  nothing  but  a  raven's  croak  ; 
But  when  I  ope  these  lips  so  pale  with  grief, 
It  is  as  though  the  deep  of  Beauty  broke. 

1  warn  the  shipman,  but  from  unbelief 
He  yields  him  to  the  dancing  waters'  lure, 
Until  he's  wrecked  against  the  rocky  reef. 

But  why  should  I  sing  truth  to  fool  and  boor 

Whose  very  gods  to  senseless  idols  turn, 

And  who  must  have  their  lies  unmixed  and  pure  ? 

I  wind  my  wreaths  and  ashes  fill  the  urn. 

After  this  sad  strain  the  Pythoness  withdraws  into 
the  temple,  whither  she  is  followed  by  CEdipus, 
eager  to  know  who  he  is,  whence  he  conies  and 


44O  PLATEN'S  POEMS. 

whither  he  is  to  go.  Laius  and  Melchior  then 
appear  on  the  stage.  Laius  is  a  fine  old  Theban 
gentleman,  who  does  not  like  the  democratic  man 
ners  of  the  present  day,  and  is  much  scandalized  at 
the  scant  courtesy  with  which  he  has  been  treated 
on  his  way  to  Delphi.  Incognito  or  not,  he  wants 
more  respect.  Already  in  a  fume  he  accosts 
CEdipus,  as  he  reappears,  with  overbearing  rudeness, 
and  in  the  rough  encounter  which  ensues  the  old 
king  is  killed. 

In  the  Theban  palace  Jocasta  is  discovered  con 
versing  with  her  two  court-poets,  Child  and 
Grandchild.  Their  discourse  turns  on  the  literary 
gossip  of  the  day,  and  then  the  Court  of  Love 
is  opened.  Jocasta  propounds  a  theme,  and  Child 
and  Grandchild  produce  glosses  on  it.  But  this 
innocent  pastime  is  interrupted  by  Tiresias,  who 
rushes  in  with  news  of  dire  import : 

TIRESIAS. 

O  queen,  upon  this  town  of  ours  hath  swoop'd  a  fearful  Shape 

of  111 ! 

How  glad  I  am  to  find  you  are  surrounded  by  your  poets  still : 
Let  them  redeem  us. 

JOCASTA. 

What's  to  pay  ? 

KIND  (Child). 

Remember,  arms  are  not  my  trade. 

TIRESIAS. 

We  have  no  call  for  arms.     We  want  a  verse  that  is  correctly 

made. 

Apollo  hath  in  anger  turned  his  favor  from  the  Theban  folk, 
Because  we  all,  instead  of  him,  the  idol  Kotzebue  invoke. 


PLATENS  POEMS.  44! 

To  pay  us  off  for  this,  the  god  hath  sent  on  us  a  fearful  minx 
With  winged  breast  and  dragon-tail,  whose  name  she  says  her 
self  is  Sphinx. 
Upon  a  rock  beside  the  road  this  toll-gate  keeper  holds  her 

place, 
Where  everybody  needs  must  pass,  so  strait  and  narrow  is  the 

space ; 
And,  as  she  scruples  not  to  swear,  she's  sent  to  get  from  every 

soul 

That  passes  by  her  station  there,  a  faultless  distich  as  the  toll  ; 
And,  as  she  hurls  adown  the  steep  the  man  whose  distich  has 

a  fault, 
That  gorge  for  nearly  all  the  town  is  now  become  a  burial 

vault ; 

But  if  one  traveller  shall  bring  a  distich  that  is  fair  and  true, 
She'll  plunge  into  the  gulf  herself,  and  peace  will  bless  the 

land  anew. 

JOCASTA. 

Lord  !  what  is  easier  than  that  ?     I'll  send  my  brace  of  poets, 
sir. 

KIND. 

But  I  would  beg  you,  good  my  queen,  remember,  human  'tis  to 

err, 

And  poets  are  but  human.     So  a  sour  reviewer  rasp'd  me  hard 
For  treating  as  a  dactyl  once  the  combination  'back-court 
yard  '. 

JOCASTA. 

Such  things  as  that  have  been  in  vogue  since  verses  first  were 

made  in  Thebes  : 
'  Shame  '  rhymes  with  '  lamb  ',  and  '  throat '  with  '  knot ',  and 

'  sheaves  '  are  bundled  up  with  'glebes  '. 

KINDESKIND  (Grandchild). 

And 'waif 'with  <  leaf '.    We  are  not  yet  the  hindmost.   Brother, 

let  us  go, 
And  thinking  out  a  distich,  try  to  make  this  dragon  leap  below. 

As  Child  and  Grandchild  go  out,  Melchior  comes 
in  and  informs  Jocasta  of  the  murder  of  her  hus 
band.  She  receives  the  news  with  great  equanimity, 


442  PLATEN'S  POEMS. 

and  proclaims  that  he  who  overcomes  the  Sphinx 
shall  receive  Jocasta's  crown  and  hand.  We  are 
now  brought  into  the  presence  of  the  Sphinx,  who 
declaims  against  the  race  of  German  bards.  Poets 
pass  by  in  crowds,  each  holding  in  his  hand  a  tablet 
on  which  a  distich  is  written,  among  them  Child 
and  Grandchild.  The  Sphinx  reads  the  distichs 
and  hurls  the  authors  into  the  abyss.  Finally 
OEdipus  appears,  and,  after  a  short  colloquy, 
presents  his  distich,1  and  the  Sphinx  plunges  into 
the  pit  of  the  theatre  and  delivers  a  discourse 
against  the  Romantic  mania  prevailing  in  Germany. 

In  the  fourth  act  we  meet  Diagoras,  who  has 
returned  to  Corinth  after  an  absence  of  thirty  years, 
and  greets  his  old  flame  once  more.  But  as  she 
desires  of  him  an  extravagant  proof  of  his  affection 
—in  fact  nothing  less  than  his  corporeal  heart,  of 
which  she  wishes  to  make  a  present  to  her  hus 
band — his  love  is  suddenly  changed  into  hatred, 
and  he  calls  her  '  Hecuba '  and  '  Cockatoo  '.  Un 
ruffled  by  this  want  of  gallantry,  she  calmly 
expresses  her  determination  to  get  hold  of  that 
noble  organ,  and  Diagoras,  becoming  alarmed, 
prepares  for  flight.  Just  then  the  jealous  Polybus 
comes  in,  who  describes  with  peculiar  gusto  his 
mining  operations,  and  drags  the  unhappy  lover  off 
to  empty  the  poisoned  bowl. 

Ten  years  have  passed  since  CEdipus  overcame 
the  Sphinx,  and  he  sits  in  his  festal  hall  and  delib 
erates  with  his  grandees  as  to  the  ways  and  means 
of  stopping  the  pestilence  and  the  famine  which  are 

1  Moge  die  Welt  durchschweifen  der  herrliche  Dulder  Odysseus, 
Kehrt  er  zurtick,  weh'  euch,  wehe  dem  Freiergeschlecht  ! 


PLATEN'S  POEMS.  443 

devastating  the  land.  Tiresias  arises  to  explain  the 
origin  of  the  plague.  The  poets,  who  had  been 
attracted  to  Thebes  by  the  hope  of  winning  the 
crown,  are  the  cause  of  this  great  misfortune. 
Everywhere  there  is  a  smell  of  bad  verses,  of 
tobacco,  of  salves.  Apollo,  it  is  true,  has  changed 
all  the  poets  into  apes,  camels,  hoopoes,  parrots, 
magpies,  and  other  appropriate  animals ;  but  the 
offensive  matter  still  remains  in  the  land.  CEdipus 
proposes  to  send  Tiresias  to  Apollo's  shrine  to  in 
quire  if  there  be  any  expiation.  At  this  juncture 
Balthasar  enters  and  announces  the  death  of  Poly- 
bus  and  Zelinda — a  slip  of  Platen's,  by  the  way,  for 
such  a  Lucrezia  Borgia  scene  ought  not  to  have 
been  announced.  That  is  too  much  in  the  style  of 
the  classic  drama.  It  should  have  been  acted  with 
all  the  usual  griping  and  gasping  of  the  modern 
stage.  But  the  poet  has  lost  his  opportunity,  and 
we  must  content  ourselves  with  Balthasar's  descrip 
tion.  Diagoras  had  banqueted  with  Polybus,  and 
the  wine  was  drugged  with  arsenic.  But  before 
the  poison  had  its  effect,  Zelinda's  maids  seized  the 
poor  lover  and  cut  out  that  often  disappointed 
heart.  This  much  tried  delicacy  is  served  up  to  the 
king  on  the  following  day,  and  after  it  is  devoured, 
Zelinda  informs  him  that  she  has  sacrificed  her 
lover  to  his  jealousy.  Enraged  at  the  discovery 
that  he  has  been  poisoned  by  his  own  act,  Polybus 
plunges  his  sword  into  the  bosom  of  his  wife  and 
thus  both  perish.  With  her  last  breath,  Zelinda 
acknowledges  that  CEdipus  is  a  foundling.  While 
CEdipus  is  still  quivering  under  this  accumulation 
of  tortures,  Jocasta  appears  and  announces  the 


444  PLATEN'S  POEMS. 

response  of  the  oracle.  The  murderer  of  Laius 
must  be  punished,  and,  as  the  person  is  unknown, 
recourse  must  be  had  to  incantation,  and  Jocasta 
expresses  her  great  anxiety,  which  has  been 'in 
creased  by  Melchior's  confession  that  he  had  not 
exposed  her  infant  son.  Tiresias,  CEdipus,  and  all 
the  train  proceed  to  a  churchyard  which  is  fur 
nished  with  cypresses  and  monuments  of  the  most 
approved  cut.  The  seer  evokes  the  ghost  of  Laius, 
who  points  to  CEdipus  as  his  murderer.  At  this 
supreme  moment  Jocasta  enters  and  CEdipus  bares 
his  breast  to  her  that  she  may  strike  home  and 
avenge  her  husband's  murder.  She  sees  the  mark 
of  the  bat — recognizes  her  son — hurries  away  and 
hangs  herself  in  the  background.  CEdipus  orders 
a  coffin  to  be  brought,  and  after  a  speech  of  great 
elegance  of  diction — for  somehow  even  in  this  trav 
esty  CEdipus  preserves  his  tragic  dignity — he  lays 
himself  down,  and  while  the  lid  is  closing,  the 
curtain  falls  to  slow  music. 

The  reader  will  doubtless  pardon  us  for  omitting 
a  minute  analysis  of  the  fifth  act  of  the  '  Romantic 
CEdipus '  which  contains  a  discussion  of  the  tragic 
interlude.  Of  course  Goodsense  is  completely  tri 
umphant  and  the  Public  more  than  half  convinced ; 
and  to  satisfy  all  parties  Nevermind  is  led  off  in 
triumph  to  Bedlam,  where  he  is  sure  to  find  an 
audience  capable  of  appreciating  his  crack-brained 
fantasies.1 

The  imitation  of  Aristophanes  in  this  piece  also 
is  very  close,  and  many  verses  are  a  direct  echo  of 

1  Obertollhausiiberschnappungsnarrenschiff. 


PLATENS  POEMS.  445 

the  great  original.1  But  while  this  close  study 
gives  these  compositions  of  Platen  a  peculiar  charm 
in  the  eyes  of  the  classical  scholar,  the  general 
public,  even  in  Germany,  has  little  real  relish  for 
such  artificial  reproductions  ;  and  Platen's  plays  are 
destined  to  become  at  no  distant  day  mere  literary 
curiosities.  As  Platen's  powers  matured,  he  de 
voted  himself  more  and  more  to  lyric  poetry  in 
antique  metres ;  and  as  a  master  of  the  form,  he 
is  still  unequalled  in  this  direction ;  so  that  those 
who  are  desirous  of  enriching  our  English  poetry 
by  classic  versification,  would  do  well  to  study 
Platen  in  order  to  see  what  has  been  done  in  a 
kindred  tongue.  But  we  shall  attempt  nothing  at 
present  in  the  way  of  translation  from  this  inter 
esting  portion  of  his  poems,  and  content  ourselves 
with  one  or  two  specimens  of  Platen's  power  as  a 
ballad-writer — ballad  in  the  German  sense.  In  our 
judgment,  some  of  his  pieces,  though  a  little  cold, 
rank  among  the  best  of  German  literature.  His 
'  Harmosan ',  for  instance,  is  better  and  more  dra 
matic  than  Riickert's  poem  on  the  same  subject. 

HARMOSAN. 
The  throne  of    the  Sassanidae  now  lay  in  dust,  the   ancient 

throne, 
And  Moslem  hands  were  plundering  the  treasur'd  wealth  of 

Ctesiphon  ; 
Now  Omar  came  to  Oxus'  strand — 'twas  after  a  many  a  hard 

fought  day, 
Where  Chosru's  grandson,  Jezdegerd,  a  corpse   on  piles  of 

corpses  lay. 

1  For  instance  : 

1  O  Grobian  !  O  Grobian !   O  Grobian  !  ' 
is  modelled  on 

G>  Xapwi', 


446  PLATEN'S  POEMS. 

As  through  the  wide  champaign  he  went,  and  countless  booty 

well  explored, 
A  satrap,  Harmosan  by  name,  was  brought  before  Medina's 

lord; 
The  last  that  with  the  fearless  foe  among  the  mountains  dared 

to  strive, 
But  ah  !  the  hand  so  bold  before,  was  manacled  by  heavy  gyve. 

And  Omar  sternly  vieweth  him  and  saith,  '  Perceivest  now  how 
slight, 

How  vain  against  the  God  we  serve  the  idol -servers'  counter- 
might  ? ' 

And  Harmosan  thus  answers  him,  '  Thy  hands  the  victory 
have  wrought, 

Whoso  gainsays  a  conqueix>r,  gainsays  from  foolish  lack  of 
thought. 

I  venture  but  a  single  prayer,  well-weighing  both  thy  lot  and 
mine  : 

Three  days  I've  fought  without  a  draught — O  !  serve  me  with 
a  draught  of  wine.' 

The  caliph  beckons— at  his  beck  a  beaker  on  the  captive  waits, 

But  Harmosan  suspects  a  drug  and  still  a  while  he  hesitates. 

'  Fear  not,'  outspeaks  the  Saracen,  '  for  treachery  stains  no 
Moslem  soul : 

Thou  shalt  not  die,  my  friend,  until  thy  lips  have  drained  this 
glowing  bowl.' 

And  then  the  Persian  takes  the  cup,  and  quickly,  with  his 
ironed  hand, 

Instead  of  drinking,  hurls  it  down  with  instantaneous  self- 
command. 

And  Omar's  followers  fall  on  him  and  haste  to  venge  the  cun 
ning  plan, 

Bright  gleam  their  swords  above  the  head  of  the  all  too  crafty 
Harmosan  — 

'  His  life  be  spared,'  cries  Omar  then,  while  warding  off  the 
threatening  sword, 

'  If  aught  be  sacred  on  the  earth,  it  is  a  warrior's  given  word.' 


PLATENS  POEMS.  447 

And  there  is  no  little  movement  in  '  Zobir ' : 
ZOBIR. 

All  eager  for  plunder,  terrific  and  poor,1 
Abdallah  has  brought  to  the  African  shore 
The  Arabian  host, 
And  suddenly  stands  upon  Tripoli's  coast. 

Yet  ere  they  lay  siege  to  the  wall  and  the  gate, 

The  noble  Gregorius  cometh  in  state — 

The  victor  renowned 

Byzantium  sent  out  to  make  war  on  Mahound. 

While  bravely  he  stems  the  fanatical  tide, 

His  daughter  so  winsome  rides  close  by  his  side, 

Her  lance  in  its  rest, 

The  golden-hair'd  maiden  with  steel-covered  breast. 

She  had  taken  upon  her  a  warrior's  part, 

And  wielded  her  spear  and  shot  far  with  her  dart 

In  the  roar  of  the  fight, 

Like  Pallas  and  yet  like  Cythere  so  bright. 

Then  up  rose  her  father  and  looking  about, 
He  fired  with  valor  his  warriors  stout — 
'  Come  cease  with  this  game, 
My  men — at  Abdallah  ! — for  that  is  your  aim. 

Whoever  shall  bring  me  the  enemy's  head, 
To-day  mine  own  lovely  Maria  shall  wed, 
With  riches  untold  : 
Beside  her  dear  self,  countless  treasures  of  gold.' 

Then  thicker  the  shafts  of  the  Christians  they  flew, 
And  the  Moslem  grew  fainter  in  muscle  and  thew, 
And  Abdallah  in  gloom 
Withdrew  to  his  tent  from  the  coming  of  doom. 

Yet  one  in  that  host  fought  with  spirit  aflame, 

A  thunderbolt  he,  and  Zobir  was  his  name  : 

Off  rides  he  in  wrath,       t 

And  his  spur,  as  it  rings,  sprinkles  blood  in  his  path. 

1  Platen  is  responsible  for  the  anticlimax  : 

Raublustig  und  schreckenverbreitend  und  arm. — B.  L.  G. 


448  PLATEN'S  POEMS. 

He  speaks  to  his  master  and  says  :  '  Will  you  miss 
The  fight  like  a  boy  ?     What,  Abdallah,  is  this  ? 
By  the  caliph  you're  sent 
To  conquer  the  world,  and  you  dream  in  your  tent  ! 

Let  that  which  the  Christian  devised  to  unnerve 
The  Moslem,  be  made  his  own  ruin  to  serve  : 
Your  promises  make 
The  equal  of  his,  and  the  same  be  the  stake. 

Announce  to  your  soldiers  this  guerdon  of  fight  : 

Whoever  the  enemy's  leader  shall  smite 

On  his  infidel  head, 

I'll  grant  him  the  lovely  Maria  to  wed.' 

Abdallah  proclaims  it — new  light  in  his  eyes — 
His  soldiers  take  heart  at  the  glorious  prize — 
Zobir  in  the  van 
With  the  whirl  of  his  scimetar  slaughters  his  man. 

See  !  the  Christians  they  hide  in  the  town  their  disgrace  ! 
See  !  how  the  gaunt  Moslems  crowd  into  the  place  ! 
See  !  floats  from  the  tow'rs 
The  flag  of  the  prophet — '  the  city  is  ours  !  ' 

Long,  long  did  Maria  the  foeman  withstand  : 

Surrounded  at  last  by  a  Saracen  band, 

On  the  tide  she  was  swept 

To  the  feet  of  Zobir,  and  she  saw  him  and  wept. 

Then  outspeaketh  one  from  the  midst  of  the  horde  : 

'  We  bring  you  your  winsome,  your  lovely  reward, 

The  beautiful  fere 

That  you  fought  with  us  for,  and  you've  gained  her,  Zobir  !' 

Then  answers  the  hero  with  sneer  and  with  jest  : 

1  Who  tempteth  the  manhood  that  reigns  in  my  breast  ? 

Catch  me  like  a  bird  ? 

I  fight  for  my  God  and  I  fight  for  his  word  ! 

For  love  of  a  Christian  I  vie  with  you  ?     I  ? 
Go,  girl  !  for  thy  freedom  is  granted  thee,  fly — 
What  seekest  thou  here  ? 
Go,  weep  for  thy  father  and  curse  thou  Zobir.' 


PLATEN'S  POEMS.  449 

From  the  year  1826,  the  year  in  which  he  wrote 
the  '  Fateful  Fork ',  Platen  spent  much  of  his  time 
in  Italy,  where  he  sought  a  milder  climate  for  his 
delicate  health,  a  softer  air  for  his  excitable  nerves, 
and  the  soothing  influence  of  absence  for  the  irri 
tation  of  a  wounded  self-love.  Many  of  his  Odes 
and  Hymns  were  written  in  Italy,  and  are  steeped  in 
the  light  of  a  southern  sky.  But  the  darts  of  satire 
reached  him  even  in  his  voluntary  exile,  and  it  was 
from  Italy  that  he  sent  back  the  *  Romantic  QEdipus  ' 
to  punish  his  assailants.  Immermann  was  good- 
natured  about  it,  but  Heine,  whom  Platen  called 
( the  shamelessest  of  human  kind ',  heaped  on  his 
enemy  the  vilest  slanders,  which  it  were  a  shame 
even  to  mention.  In  1832  Platen  returned  to  Ger 
many  for  a  short  time,  and  went  backwards  and 
forwards  between  Italy  and  Germany,  until  April, 
1834,  when  he  left  his  native  land  for  the  last  time. 
He  died  of  fever  near  Syracuse,  whither  he  had  fled 
from  the  cholera,  December  the  fifth,  1835.  An 
Austrian  prince  visited  his  tomb  a  few  years  ago 
and  wrote :  '  What  German  passes  through  Syra 
cuse  without  going  to  see  Platen's  grave?  Our 
carriage  stopped  at  a  shabby  house,  and  we  stum 
bled  and  jumbled  through  an  orchard  after  the 
Italian  fashion,  pushed  through  branches  and 
through  thorns  by  a  narrow  and  steep  path  that 
ran  along  the  garden,  and  suddenly  found  our 
selves  standing  by  the  grave  of  the  great  poet,  who 
showed  the  astonished  world  what  can  be  done 
with  the  German  language  in  antique  metre.  The 
tombstone  has  a  Latin  inscription  that  calls  the 
poet  the  German  Horace,  and  the  coat-of-arms  of 


45O  PLATEN'S  POEMS. 

the  Platen  family,  already  mutilated,  has  been  let 
into  the  garden-wall  in  mosaic.  Poverty-stricken 
cypresses  stand  on  the  right  and  on  the  left  of  the 
spot.'  And  as  we  review  this  description,  which 
bears  the  impress  of  fidelity,  we  cannot  help 
thinking  that  our  tribute  to  the  memory  of  an  old 
favorite  is  something  like  that  visit  of  Maximilian's 
to  the  poet's  grave :  that  we  have  dragged  our 
readers  over  a  rough  and  thorny  path  to  see  a 
neglected  tomb — an  inscription  in  an  alien  tongue 
— a  mutilated  coat-of-arms,  and  a  few  cypresses 
that  have  not  borne  transplanting  very  well.1 

1  A  handsome  monument  was  erected  to  Platen's  memory  in 
1869,  the  year  after  this  study  was  published,  and  a  photograph 
of  it,  which  I  owe  to  the  kindness  of  President  Oilman,  reached 
me  while  this  volume  was  preparing  for  the  printer.  The 
cypresses  do  not  look  '  poverty-stricken  '  and  the  inscription 
is  in  simple  German  ;  only  the  stone-cutter  has  left  out  one  '  r  ' 
in  '  Errichtet',  which  the  shade  of  the  sensitive  poet,  who  in 
life  wanted  everything  that  belonged  to  him  in  the  way  of 
honor,  must  assuredly  resent. — B.  L.  G. 


MAXIMILIAN;  HIS  TRAVELS 
AND  HIS  TRAGEDY 


MAXIMILIAN  ;  HIS  TRAVELS  AND  HIS 
TRAGEDY.1 

The  sceptre  of  the  tragic  art  is  a  disputed  sceptre, 
and  men  adjudge  it,  according  to  their  temperament 
or  their  nationality,  to  this  one  or  that  one  of  the 
three  great  names  of  antiquity ;  but  the  most  devoted 
admirer  of  ^schylus  will  not  deny  to  Sophocles 
one  peculiar  excellence,  the  wonderful  preparation  of 
the  catastrophe.  The  poet  lays  down  the  meshes  of 
fate  afar  off.  Every  line  of  the  drama  is  a  line  of  the 
great  network ;  each  winged  word  carries  its  thread 
as  light  as  gossamer,  but  as  strong  as  steel,  to  the 
distant  knotting-place ;  and  so  the  toils  grow  closer 
and  closer,  and  the  struggles  of  the  victim  tighten 
the  cords,  while  his  cries  of  anguish  echo  with  cruel 
significance  every  past  utterance  of  joy,  every  past 

'i.  Aus    meinem    Leben :    Reiseskizzen,    Aphorismen,   Ge- 
dichte.     Leipzig :  1867. 

2.  L'Empereur   Maximilien,    son    Elevation   et   sa   Chute. 
D'apres  des  documents  inedits,  par  le  Comte  Emile  de  Kera- 
try.     Leipzig :   1867. 

3.  Maximilian's  Execution  discussed  in  a  Brief  Review  of 
Mexican  History.     By  Edmund  Stephenson,  twenty  years  resi 
dent  in  Mexico.     London  :   1867. 

4.  Kaiser   Maximilian    I.     Von   T.  A.  Liegel.     Hamburg  : 
1868. 

5.  Moderne  Imperatoren.     Diskretes  und  Indiskretes.     Per- 
sonliche  Erinnerungen  eines  politischen  Agenten.     Napoleon 
III.     Maximilian  I.     Koln :  1867. 

6.  Le  Mexique   tel  qu'il  est.     Par  Emmanuel  Domenech. 
Paris  :  1867. 


454  MAXIMILIAN; 

outburst  of  uncontrollable  pride.  To  some  this 
cunning  workmanship  may  seem  too  studied,  too 
artificial ;  but  the  old  poet  was  a  man  who  looked 
narrowly  into  the  machinery  of  human  life,  and  this 
strain  of  unconscious  prophecy  is  not  intended 
simply  for  theatrical  effect,  it  is  an  artistic  reproduc 
tion  of  the  real  working  of  human  destinies.  For 
every  life  is  more  or  less  of  a  tangle :  to  no  one  is 
it  given  to  reel  off  his  allotted  skein  with  perfect 
smoothness  ;  and  so  far  every  man  has  his  tragedy. 
The  mistakes  and  the  cross-purposes  of  our  personal 
history  are  no  laughing  matter,  and  cannot  be  a 
laughing  matter  to  him  who  has  any  proper  estimate 
of  the  value  of  a  human  life.  Yet  few  have  the 
patience  or  the  courage  to  trace  back  their  present  to 
their  past,  through  all  the  minute  lines  of  connexion  ; 
and  most  people  are  content  with  noting  what  they 
consider  the  turning-points  of  their  course  of  life, 
incurious  or  afraid  of  a  more  subtle  investigation. 
Indeed,  few  have  the  material,  for  comparatively 
few  preserve  any  record  of  their  thoughts  and  feel 
ings  ;  and  so  all  but  the  most  vivid  impressions  are 
effaced,  and  even  those  are  refracted  by  the  denser 
medium  of  the  present.  But  material  or  no  ma 
terial,  we  are  all  ready  enough  and  willing  enough 
to  study  the  tragic  failures  of  others  ;  and  few  lives 
have  such  interest  for  our  time  as  the  life  that  ended 
the  other  day  at  Queretaro.1  Such  genius,  such 

1  Written  in  1868.  Maximilian  was  vivid  enough  to  the 
Southern  people  of  that  time,  and  many  of  our  exiles  knew  him 
well.  Now  he  is  a  mere  shadow,  and  if  this  volume  had  not 
already  been  swollen  beyond  its  legitimate  bulk,  a  brief  memoir 
might  appropriately  be  added  to  explain  the  allusions  in  the 
text.— B.  L.  G. 


HIS    TRAVELS  AND   HIS    TRAGEDY.        455 

energy,  such  high  purpose,  such  noble  devotion, 
have  seldom  made  such  utter  shipwreck  ;  and  we 
must  confess  that,  to  our  minds,  the  personal  and 
not  the  political  fate  of  Maximilian  is  the  topic  of 
absorbing  interest.  So  tragic  are  the  elements  of 
the  drama  that  we  might  almost  fancy  the  whole 
scene  shifted  from  the  new  world  and  modern  times, 
to  ancient  times  and  classic  ground.  We  do  not 
ask  what  was  the  state  of  parties  in  Thebes.  CEdipus 
may  have  belonged  to  the  Liberals, 'and  Creon  to 
the  Clericals  of  the  period,  and  Eteocles  and  Poly- 
nices  may  have  cut  each  other's  throats  about  a 
matter  of  mortmain,  for  all  we  care  ;  and  so  in  this 
great  tragedy  we  are  almost  tempted  to  let  Mexican 
politics  roll  down  the  abyss  to  which  the  atrabilious 
Keratry  consigns  everything  and  everybody  in  that 
'  accursed  land,  where  the  word  "  country  "  strikes 
no  responsive  chord' — '  un  pays  maudit ;  le  mot 
patrie  riy  vibre  plus! 

This  personal  interest  has  led  us  to  read  the  seven 
volumes  of  Maximilian's  works  that  have  been 
issued  in  rapid  succession  during  the  last  few 
months  ;  and  unless  we  have  been  deceived  by  the 
facility  of  aftersight,  by  the  ease  of  a  vaticinatio  post 
eventum,  we  think  that  we  can  see  in  the  uncon 
scious  self-delineation  of  the  young  Austrian  officer, 
the  prediction  of  the  romantic  career  of  the  Emperor 
of  Mexico.  Certainly,  when  read  side  by  side,  the 
history  of  the  Mexican  Empire  and  the  Travels  of 
the  Archduke  form  most  startling  commentaries  on 
each  other,  and  the  most  brilliant  vindication  of  the 
truthfulness  of  the  tragic  art  of  the  ancients,  which 
seems  at  first  too  studied,  too  coolly  calculated. 


456  MAXIMILIAN; 

But  we  are  not  equal  to  a  purely  aesthetic  discussion 
of  so  '  palpitating '  a  theme,  and  if  we  were,  it  is  cer 
tain  that  most  of  our  readers  would  be  revolted  by 
so  cold-blooded  a  dissection  of  the  subject ;  and  we 
have  little  fancy  for  the  title  of  a  '  fingering  slave  '. 
Nor  shall  we  presumptuously  take  on  ourselves, 
like  too  many  of  the  historical  guild,  the  preroga 
tives  of  Him  that  not  only  searcheth  the  heart  and 
trieth  the  reins  of  the  children  of  men,  but  who  also 
executeth  judgment.  Our  simple  task  will  be  to 
gather  up  and  group  the  results  of  a  comparison  of 
the  works  above  cited,  which,  this  time  at  least,  are 
not  the  mere  conventional  figureheads  of  an  article. 
The  first  four  volumes  of  Maximilian's  writings 
are  a  reprint  of  an  earlier  edition,  prepared  several 
years  ago,  for  strictly  private  circulation,  at  the 
Imperial  office  in  Vienna.  The  present  issue  is 
intended  for  the  public  at  large — '  the  right  of  trans 
lation  is  reserved' — and  if  Queen  Victoria's  con 
fidences  are  read,  Maximilian's  in  an  English  dress1 
will  doubtless  find  readers  and  admirers  enough  on 
both  sides  of  the  water.  These  first  four  volumes 
contain  Sketches  of  Travel  in  Italy,  Sicily,  Spain, 
Portugal,  Algiers,  Albania,  in  the  years  1851-1853. 
The  last  three  contain  a  description  of  his  expedi 
tion  to  South  America  in  the  winter  of  1859-60,  a 
collection  of  aphorisms,  and  a  number  of  poems. 
There  is  a  wide  gap  between  the  two  sets  of  vol 
umes,  just  as  there  is  a  wide  gap  in  time  and  devel 
opment  between  the  boy  of  nineteen  and  the  man  of 
twenty-eight,  and  yet  the  personal  identity  is  strik 
ingly  preserved  ;  for  although  we  cannot  coincide 

'An  English  translation  was  announced  in  1868. 


HIS    TRAVELS   AND   HIS    TRAGEDY.        457 

fully  with  the  reported  opinion  of  Lord  Brougham 
that  the  fourth  year  is  the  grand  climacteric  of  char 
acter,  still  we  are  convinced  that  the  great  lines  are 
drawn  much  earlier  than  most  persons  suppose. 
There  is  greater  maturity  of  thought,  greater  com 
mand  of  language,  and,  what  is  more  important,  a 
manlier  grasp  of  things,  but  the  real  self  of  his 
poetic  nature  has  changed  but  little.  At  Naples 
and  at  Bahia,  at  Pompeii  and  in  the  Mato  Virgem 
he  is  the  same  ;  though  so  much  of  life  lies  in  those 
seven  years — his  marriage,  his  vice-royalty  in  Lom- 
bardy.  He  is  the  same,  although  he  considers 
himself  so  strangely  altered  ;  although  he  writes  at 
the  close  of  1859 — '  I  am  sa<^  when  I  compare  then 
and  now — then  I  was  just  waking  up  to  life  and 
marched  joyously  to  meet  the  future.  In  my  pres 
ent  pilgrimage  there  is  something  weary.  My 
shoulders  are  no  longer  light  and  free ;  they  have 
to  bear  no  little  of  a  bitter  past.' 

The  title  '  Sketches  of  Travel '  is  not  a  promising 
one,  and  if  Maximilian  had  followed  the  example 
of  so  many  '  noble  authors  ',  these  volumes  would 
have  been  almost  worthless  for  such  a  purpose  as 
ours.  A  re-hash  of  Murray  or  Badeker  or  Forster 
or  any  other  standard  compiler  of  guide-books, 
however  flavored  by  the  aristocratic  spoiler  of 
broth,  is  very  little  to  the  taste  of  any  sensible  man. 
But  these  books  are  really  drawn  '  out  of  his  life  '- 
are  really  a  part  of  an  autobiography ;  and  a  large 
proportion  of  every  day's  record  is  devoted  to  his 
feelings  and  reflections  as  well  as  to  his  experience 
and  observations.  Yet  on  the  other  hand  it  must 
not  be  supposed  that  Maximilian  used  the  title  of 


458  MAX  I  MIL  IAN  ; 

traveller  merely  as  a  convenient  text  for  the  display 
of  his  wealth  of  fancy  and  his  facility  of  sentimental 
rhetoric.  Without  such  an  overflow  he  could  not 
have  lived,  so  exuberant  was  his  nature ;  but  that 
was  not  all.  He  was  a  traveller  from  passion  and 
gifted  as  few  travellers  are.  The  riches  of  but  four 
of  his  days  in  Bahia  require  no  less  than  282  pages 
for  their  exposition ;  and  even  if  you  omit  the 
moralizing  and  the  sentimentalizing,  and  all  the 
postliminary  cramming,  there  is  enough  of  close 
and  accurate  observation  left  to  show  the  genius  of 
the  man  ;  so  that  the  majority  of  gaping  dawdlers 
who  call  themselves  travellers  may  well  be  put  to 
the  blush  by  this  keen-sighted,  energetic  explorer. 
Keratry  endeavors  to  produce  the  impression  that 
Maximilian  was  a  mere  man  of  the  closet — a 
bureau-worker,  and  makes  a  wry  face  at  the 
1  statuts '  which  the  unfortunate  prince  lugged  with 
him  from  Miramar.  But  throughout  his  life  Maxi 
milian  appears  a  man  of  action, — dreamer  if  you 
will,  at  times, — possessed  of  a  dream,  if  you  will, 
always ;  but  still  a  man  of  real,  waking  and 
working  power — thatkrdftig — as  became  one  of  his 
line.  Of  this  energy  in  travel  he  has  himself  given 
us  with  pardonable  self-complacency  a  singular 
illustration  in  the  first  pages  of  his  twelfth  sketch  : 
'  If  everything  hits,  an  incredible  amount — I  am 
speaking  from  experience — can  be  seen  in  a  short 
time ;  to  be  sure  you  must  have  energy,  good 
nerves  and  resolute  will.  Why,  I  went  all  over 
Rome,  the  great,  the  eternal  city,  in  three  days,  and 
in  those  three  days  I  was  three  times  in  the  Coli 
seum,  three  times  in  the  Vatican,  three  times  in  St. 


HIS    TRAVELS  AND   HIS    TRAGEDY.        459 

Peter's,  and  once  in  the  ball  on  the  top  of  the  dome ; 
visited  all  the  churches,  collections  and  monuments, 
inspected  the  principal  works  of  the  magnificent 
Vatican  library,  and  have  still  the  liveliest  recollec 
tion  of  the  individual  gems  among  the  statues  and 
pictures  ;  had  the  proud  satisfaction  several  years 
afterwards — when  showing  some  photographic 
views — of  setting  a  lady  right,  who  had  lived  more 
than  thirty  years  in  Rome;  and  yet  had  time 
enough  in  those  three  days  to  visit  the  Holy  Father 
twice,  to  hear  two  masses  with  him,  and  then 
breakfast  with  him,  to  attend  a  long  High  mass  in 
the  Sistine  Chapel,  to  eat  several  grand  dinners, 
[not  more  than  three,  it  is  to  be  hoped] ;  and 
finally,  with  all  that,  to  pay  and  to  receive  a  multi 
tude  of  visits  of  ceremony.  To  be  sure  the  mad 
chase  (Hetze)  always  began  about  five  o'clock  in 
the  morning  and  did  not  end — thanks  to  the  superb 
full  moon — until  after  one  o'clock  at  night.'  How 
ever  deplorable  the  necessity  of  such  haste,  it  is 
impossible  not  to  admire  the  energy  which  com 
passed  so  much  in  so  short  a  time ;  and  the  recep 
tivity  which  took  in  such  distinct  images,  where 
duller  senses  would  have  seen  but  confused 
shadows.  Most  of  the  rapid  school  of  travellers 
that  we  have  met  seem  to  have  had  their  brains 
addled  by  the  imperfect  hatching  of  new  ideas,  and 
we  have  often  had  occasion  to  pity  the  poor  crea 
tures  who  could  not  recall  where  they  saw  the  Lion 
of  St.  Mark's  and  where  the  Sistine  Madonna :  pic 
ture-galleries  and  sculpture-galleries  and  churches 
and  opera-houses  all  jumbled  together  in  a  chaos 
of  confused  half-memories.  What  Maximilian  saw, 


460  MAXIMILIAN; 

he  saw  with  an  artist's  eye  and  reproduced  with 
an  artist's  hand.  His  style  is  elegant ;  for  a  boy 
of  nineteen  or  twenty  the  composition  of  his  earlier 
sketches  is  wonderful ;  and  yet  we  hesitate  as  we 
pronounce  our  judgment.  As  a  constant  reader  of 
French  becomes  despite  himself  a  fastidious  critic 
of  awkward  phraseology  and  lumbering  periods,  so 
those  whose  profession  requires  a  daily  soaking  in 
German  prose  become  careless  about  the  greater  or 
less  density  of  the  fluid,  or — shall  we  say  it  boldly  ? 
— of  the  mud-bath.  Lessing  shows  that  the  German 
language,  capable  of  everything,  is  not  incapable, 
as  some  would  have  us  believe,  of  the  great  virtue 
of  concinnity ;  and  we  have  often  regretted  that 
there  are  so  few  imitators  of  that  terse,  neat,  precise, 
penetrating  diction  of  his.  But  from  a  German 
point  of  view,  we  need  not  fear  being  gainsaid.  All 
seem  to  agree  that  in  grace  and  elegance  Maxi 
milian's  style  leaves  little  to  be  desired.  But  grace 
and  elegance  are  not  everything ;  and  a  miserable 
anonymous  diplomatic  agent,  who  spells  '  phlegm  ' 
persistently  with  a  pft  miswrites  all  his  French 
words  and  tells  us  that  he  breakfasted  with  Prince 
Louis  Napoleon  at  the  '  Travellers'  Club '  on  '  reetn- 
steak  ' — deigns  further  to  enlighten  us  as  to  the  real 
worth  of  the  earlier  sketches.  '  Pretty,  graceful, 
hasty.  Nowhere  a  deep  idea,  no  striking  expres 
sion  of  an  individual  character;  everything  conven 
tionally  smooth  and  polished.'  If  the  diplomatic 
ra^steak-eater  is  right,  we  are  hopelessly  wrong ; 
and  yet  we  do  not  intend  to  yield  the  point  that 
Maximilian  had  an  individual  character,  simply 
because  his  style  is  not  as  ponderous  as  pumper- 


HIS    TRAVELS  AND   HIS    TRAGEDY.       461 

nickel,  and  because  his  handwriting  was  rarely 
beautiful  with  its  long,  straight,  unshaded  lines. 
Start  with  the  idea  that  his  type  was  feminine 
rather  than  masculine,  that  his  was  a  mere  dilet 
tante  nature,  and  you  can  satisfy  yourself  of  that, 
provided  always  you  shut  your  eyes  to  everything 
else. 

For  a  boy  of  twenty,  we  repeat,  his  composition 
is  wonderful  in  grace  and  point.  He  shows  from 
the  very  beginning  a  painter's  appreciation  of  pic 
turesque  effects;  and  few  travellers  have  drawn 
more  vivid  sketches  of  scenery.  Especially  re 
markable,  however,  for  this  power  are  the  later 
papers,  entitled  the  Mato  Virgem  (Virgin  Forest), 
which  are  full  of  all  the  tropical  glory  of  South 
America,  and  transport  the  reader,  with  a  singular 
facility  of  representation,  into  those  wonderful 
'  cathedrals  of  the  Creator  of  all  that  is  created,  with 
their  living  giant  pillars,  the  green  sunlit  arches, 
their  fulness  of  forms  and  color,'  until  we  seem  to 
walk  with  him  on  the  springy  carpet  of  moss  and 
mould,  and  look  up  with  him  along  the  strange 
ladders  of  climbing  vines  to  the  leafy  roof  which 
sifts  the  light  through  into  the  aisles  below.  But 
his  love  of  painting  and  the  picturesque  sometimes 
misleads  him;  and  we  are  not  unfrequently  re 
minded  that  we  have  to  do  with  the  child  of  an 
'  over-refined,  over-civilized  '  generation  ;  that,  after 
all  his  experiences,  he  is  the  same  spoiled  young 
gentleman  who  complains  that  the  colors  of  the 
curtains  and  of  the  furniture  of  his  cabin  are  in 
too  glaring  contrast.  It  is  Maximilian  the  painter, 
not  Maximilian  the  poet,  that  often  and  over  again 


462  MAXIMILIAN; 

draws  his  comparison  from  the  theatre  ;  and  so  fre 
quent  are  the  parallelisms  that  he  makes  between 
the  actual  views  before  him  and  the  pasteboard  and 
canvas  of  the  stage,  that  one  might  take  him  for  a 
manager  or  a  '  properties  '-man  on  his  travels.  To  us 
there  is  something  peculiarly  ominous  in  all  these 
theatrical  allusions ;  and  by  their  sinister  light  we 
see  in  the  future  an  invading  army  welcomed  by 
bouquets  and  fireworks  that  their  sovereign  had  paid 
for,  a  junta  of  notables  dressed  up  for  the  nonce,  a 
farce  of  an  election,  a  shadowy  crown — and  the 
end — Queretaro. 

We  have  called  Maximilian  a  poet ;  but  he  was  a 
truer  poet  in  his  prose  than  in  the  poetic  form 
proper.  The  verses  are  smooth  enough,  the  lan 
guage  elegant,  the  thoughts  not  trivial,  and  yet 
there  is  a  want  of  that  vis  vivida  which  makes  the 
real  poet.  Of  course,  in  view  of  his  sad  fate,  there 
are  lines  here  and  there  that  sink  more  deeply  into 
the  heart ;  but  we  all  know  how  poor  the  poetry 
may  be  and  yet  how  electric  the  effect.  The  light 
ning  is  not  in  the  line,  but  only  passes  through  it ; 
whereas  poetry  is  a  growth,  not  a  medium.  Still 
we  must  speak  on  this  point  also  with  due  reserve ; 
for  holding  with  Goethe  that  '  recent  (German) 
poets  put  a  great  deal  of  water  in  their  ink ',  we  are 
no  admirers  of  Lenau  or  Freiligrath,  or  any  of  the 
still  newer  set,  and  Maximilian  may  be  quite  as 
good  as  some  of  his  models,  for  all  we  know. 

If  we  turn  from  the  exhibition  of  his  skill  as  a 
writer  to  his  acquisitions  as  a  student,  we  find  that, 
closing  as  his  formal  education  did,  at  eighteen,  it 
left  many  gaps  unfilled.  A  scholar,  in  the  English 


HIS    TRAVELS  AND   HIS    TRAGEDY.       463 

sense,  Maximilian  was  not ;  Austria  has  only  re 
cently  begun  to  wake  up  to  the  importance  of  clas 
sical  education  ;  her  best  philologians  are  importa 
tions  ;  and  Maximilian's  classical  training  seems  to 
have  been  of  the  most  superficial.  His  allusions 
are  all  of  the  tritest  character  ;  his  Latin  quotations 
come  direct  from  the  first  pages  of  the  Reader,  and 
are  sometimes  puzzlingly  inapt ;  in  Greek  he  shares 
the  mania  of  American  editors  for  interchanging 
i  and  y — spelling  Sphinx  and  Piraeus,  Phz'le  and 
Kallip/gos  with  all  the  independence  of  Kaiser  Sig- 
ismund,  who,  at  the  Council  of  Constance,  declared 
himself  to  be  '  above  grammar ';  and  his  few  elegiacs 
are  as  horrible  jumbles  of  syllables  as  ever  dis 
graced  King  Louis  of  Bavaria.1  Far  greater  were 
his  attainments  in  modern  languages — a  necessary 
accomplishment  for  a  man  in  his  position — and  his 
stock  of  general  information  was  respectable,  though 
not  vast.  His  taste  in  poetry  was,  as  we  have 
already  hinted,  liberal  beyond  measure ;  his  reading 
embraces  the  extremes  of  Shakespeare  and  Kot- 
zebue ;  his  admiration  stretches  from  Heine  to 
Grillparzer.  As  a  painter,  his  practical  skill,  ac 
cording  to  report,  rose  far  above  mere  amateurship  ; 
he  was  passionately  fond  of  music,  and,  as  every 
page  of  his  later  sketches  shows,  an  enthusiastic 
botanist.  '  Let  others  turn  to  the  grave  studies  of 
mineralogy  and  geology  ;  I  stick  to  blossom  and 
fruit.'  But  all  these  accomplishments  were  outside 
of  his  profession,  to  which  he  was  early  destined, 
to  which  he  was  sincerely  devoted.  He  was  proud 

1  e.  g. :    Mit  gehorigem  Mass  das  Erlaubte  alles  versuchen, 
Gibt  dir  Urtheilskraft  in  ungewohnlichem  Mass. 


464  MAXIMILIAN; 

to  be  a  sailor ;  and  to  the  best  of  his  extraordinary 
ability  he  made  himself  master  of  his  trade.  That 
his  exulting  and  abounding  nature  should  have 
rejoiced  in  the  poetry  of  the  profession  was  but 
natural.  How  many  grim  captains  have  begun  as 
dreaming  boys  ! — but  it  is  a  mere  distortion  of  facts 
to  represent  him  as  carried  away  with  the  romance 
of  swelling  sails,  manned  yards,  salutes  of  honor, 
and  •  all  the  other  stuff  that  landlubbers  think  so 
fine.  From  the  very  beginning  of  his  actual  service 
on  shipboard,  he  exhibited  an  earnest  purpose  to 
learn  his  business  thoroughly ;  as  Admiral  of  the 
Austrian  fleet  he  succeeded,  despite  much  snubbing 
from  Vienna,  in  bringing  life  into  the  naval  service  ; 
many  of  his  plans,  once  sneered  at  as  mere  theories, 
approved  themselves  in  practice,  and  we  can  well 
believe  that  among  the  few  joyous  moments  vouch 
safed  to  him  in  the  last  troubled  months  of  his  life, 
foremost  was  that  which  brought  the  tidings  of 
Tegethoff's  victory. 

It  is  ill  judging  of  a  man's  manners  by  his 
writings  ;  and  yet,  even  if  we  had  no  other  evidence, 
we  should  hardly  be  able  to  read  these  sketches 
and  resist  the  impression  that  their  author  possessed 
a  power  of  social  fascination  accorded  to  few.  So 
open,  so  sympathetic,  so  ready  to  share  a  sorrow, 
to  lend  fresh  zest  to  merriment !  It  is  true  that  he 
shows  rather  too  frequently  a  malicious  pleasure  at 
the  awkwardness  and  misadventures  of  his  fellow- 
travellers,  and  one  or  two  practical  jokes  of  his 
verge  on  the  cruel ;  but  generally  he  shows  indi 
rectly  the  greatest  consideration  for  all  about  him, 
and  an  absence,  or  rather  abhorrence,  of  ceremonious 


HIS    TRAVELS  AND   HIS    TRAGEDY.       465 

stiffness  that  would  surprise  those  who  fancy  kings 
and  princes  stalking  about  in  coronation  robes, 
and  did  surprise  some  of  his  Brazilian  hosts,  who 
expected  at  the  very  least  a  uniform  and  an  order 
of  the  Golden  Fleece,  and  found  their  archducal 
guest  as  simple  in  his  attire  as  he  was  in  his 
manners.  Of  course  we  would  not  convey  the 
impression  that  Maximilian  was  in  the  habit  of 
appearing  on  the  Prater  of  Vienna  '  in  a  blue  blouse, 
with  white  linen  trousers  in  an  advanced  state  of 
dilapidation,  with  coarse  cavalry  boots  encasing 
his  legs,  on  his  head  a  tall  steeple  of  a  night-cap 
with  the  indispensable  tassel,  in  his  right  hand  a 
knotty  stick — a  perfect  model  of  a  suspicious  char 
acter.'  Such  primitive  costumes  were  reserved  for 
the  primitive  forest ;  but  he  really  delighted  in  get 
ting  away  from  the  restraints  of  etiquette,  and  in 
displaying  all  the  resources  of  his  social  nature.  In 
short,  we  can  well  believe  the  universal  testimony 
that  there  was  no  unseemly  pride  of  manner  in  this 
thorough  gentleman  ;  no  haughty  Deigratiosity — 
(Keme  Spur  von  hochmuthigetn  Gottesgnadenthum, 
says  a  humble  German  admirer).  But  the  utmost 
simplicity,  frankness,  and  warmth  of  manner  are 
not  inconsistent  with  pride  of  rank  ;  and  Maximilian 
himself  says  with  considerable  force :  '  It  is  a  pity 
that  sovereigns  and  princes  who  are  clever  wish 
to  produce  an  effect  and  shine  by  their  cleverness 
exclusively,  and  neglect  the  advantages  of  their 
rank ;  it  is  a  crime  against  their  weaker  brethren 
and  successors.'  And  he  stood  by  his  order,  as 
was  but  natural.  His  views  of  his  cousins,  the 
Italian  princes,  are  not  exactly  our  views.  We 


466  MAXIMILIAN; 

have  no  Italian  princes  for  cousins,  and  it  was  not 
our  'white  coats  '  that  restored  order  in  the  turbu 
lent  days  of  '48.  With  the  infamous  gagging- 
machine  called  the  cuffia  di  silenzio  fresh  in  our 
memory,  we  should  not  have  thought  of  comparing 
King  Bomba  to  Abraham  because  he  entertained 
the  Pope,  nor  should  we  give  Her  over-gracious 
Majesty  Isabel  Segunda  the  advantage  of  so  mild 
a  characteristic  as  this  :  '  Poor  innocent  Isabella  has 
certainly  been  treated  by  fate  in  the  most  extraor 
dinary  manner ;  the  football"  of  the  most  fearful 
passions,  she  has  grown  up  without  principles  in 
the  midst  of  seditions  to  make  principles  for  herself; 
a  child  of  chance,  she  is  gifted  with  varied  talents, 
and  has  had  the  good  fortune  to  gain  the  love  of 
her  subjects  by  great  kindness  of  heart  and  winning 
ways.'  His  pride  of  birth,  which  is  apparent  at 
every  turn,  is  pardonable,  or  at  all  events  compre 
hensible,  in  a  scion  of  the  House  of  Habsburg;  not 
an  amiable  House,  not  a  progressive  House,  it  is 
true;  but  a  House  endowed  with  the  very  respect 
able  characteristic  of  toughness,  as  is  shown  by 
the  fact  that  its  fortunes  were  established  by 
matrimonial  alliances  ;  and,  indeed,  few  can  help 
admiring  the  dogged  courage  with  which  the 
Habsburgers  and  their  people  hold  their  own  against 
the  foe.  They  get  beaten,  and  that  right  often, 
but  they  sell  victory  dear ;  and  if  Prussia  and  the 
needle-gun  were  too  much  for  them  at  Sadowa, 
they  showed  at  Custozza  and  Lissa  that  they  had 
not  forgotten  Novara.  Of  this  stubborn,  indomi 
table  stock,  Maximilian  was  naturally  proud.  His 
ideal  was  Charles  the  Fifth  ;  though  his  character 


HIS    TRAVELS  AND   HIS    TRAGEDY.       46? 

reminds  us  more  of  his  namesake,  Maximilian,  the 
grandfather  of  his  great  hero — a  flighty,  adven 
turous,  poetic  Kaiser,  not  over  lucky  in  war,  but 
a  gallant  fellow  and  a  gorgeous.  But  this  Maxi 
milian  contents  himself  with  a  passing  compliment 
to  the  other,  and  saves  his  love,  his  veneration,  we 
may  say  his  adoration,  for  the  great  Charles. 
Indeed,  it  is  impossible  to  resist  the  impression 
that  Maximilian  fancied  he  recognized  in  himself  a 
modern  likeness  of  his  illustrious  ancestor.  He 
admired  in  Charles  what  he  found  in  his  own 
character,  the  blending  of  the  practical  with  the 
romantic.  Had  any  other  than  Charles  laid  his 
hand  on  the  magic  buildings  of  Granada,  Maxi 
milian  would  have  treated  the  unfortunate  wight 
as  Elgin  was  treated  by  Byron.  But  what  does  he 
say  now  ? 

'  Charles  was  an  Emperor,  but  a  poet  too  ;  as  he 
travelled  over  his  beautiful  Spain  he  found  Granada 
and  loved  it.  The  freshness  and  verdure  of  his 
northern  realms  and  the  luxurious  glow  that 
enchained  the  romantic  element  of  his  nature,  pre 
sented  themselves  united  here.  Here  would  he 
take  up  his  abode.  It  was  not  the  Emperor  but  the 
poet  that  loved  the  Alhambra,  the  gardens  of  roses, 
the  courtyards  with  their  myrtles,  the  marble  basins 
with  their  silvery  fountains  and  the  joyous  pattering 
of  the  fish,  the  forests  of  slender  marble  pillars,  the 
graceful  festoons  and  the  fairy  arabesques,  the 
dreamy  life  of  magic  tale  amid  the  perfume  of  the 
roses  and  the  song  of  the  nightingales — amid 
melody  and  harmony — such  a  life  as  was  offered 
by  the  inner  world  of  the  Moorish  castle.  For  the 


468  MAXIMILIAN; 

master  of  the  world,  who  durst  not  dream  on  his 
throne  ever  lighted  by  the  sun,  all  this  loveliness 
existed  not.  Mighty  should  the  palace  of  the  great 
Charles  be.  He  had  the  Moorish  winter-palace 
torn  down  to  build  up  his  Imperial  castle  on  the 
rubbish  of  the  ruined  world  of  faery.  He  perpe 
trated  a  horrible  crime  against  art,  but  his  massive 
palace,  with  its  huge  blocks  of  yellow  stone, 
embodies  the  idea  of  the  sovereign,  while  the 
remaining  summer-palace  of  the  Moorish  kings 
produces  only  a  winsome,  romantic  effect.  It  is  a 
dwelling  of  the  Elves,  in  which  you  can  dream,  but 
not  govern.  Charles's  palace  is  a  prince  with  crown 
and  helmet  on,  in  its  grave  majesty ;  the  abode  of 
the  Caliphs,  a  siren  with  moist  pearls  in  her  flowing 
silken  hair.  If  I  were  a  monarch  and  had  to  choose 
between  the  two  royal  residences,  I  should  choose 
without  hesitation  the  square-stone  palace  of 
Charles.'  Is  not  this  the  man  that  left  the  fairy 
castle  of  Miramar  to  build  a  palace  like  the  palace 
of  Charles,  and  to  leave  it,  as  did  Charles,  unfin 
ished  ?  It  would  have  been  better,  perhaps,  if  he 
had  let  the  poetic  element  rule  in  him,  and  dreamed 
away  his  life  in  his  beautiful  Miramar  or  his 
romantic  Lacroma.  Perhaps  ?  No,  certainly  not. 
He  himself  would  rather  have  chosen  his  terrible 
end  than  to  live  a  life  of  inglorious  ease,  or  to 
repeat  the  story  of  Boabdil,  whose  fairy  home  is 
described  with  such  glow  of  coloring,  to  whose 
'  last  sigh  '  he  devoted  some  significant  verses.  No. 
Maximilian  was  indeed,  like  his  great  ancestor,  not 
a  poet  merely.  Action  was  as  necessary  to  him  as 
art;  and,  in  the  circle  of  his  friends,  his  love  of 


HIS    TRAVELS  AND   HIS    TRAGEDY.       469 

adventure  seems  to  have  called  forth  ridicule  and 
remonstrance.  '  Better ',  he  cries,  '  real  death  than 
dead  reality  ';  and  in  more  than  one  place  he  defends 
himself  with  considerable  adroitness  against  both 
ridicule  and  remonstrance.  Penetrated  with  the 
conviction  that  he  was  destined  to  a  high  career,  he 
regarded  his  little  expeditions,  his  little  exposures 
to  danger  as  preparations  for  those  great  crises 
through  which  he  had  to  pass ;  and  to  men  of  our 
recent  experience  it  is  almost  amusing  to  watch  the 
'  exaltation '  with  which  Maximilian  gets  ready  for 
a  three  days'  trip  into  a  tropical  forest,  and  the 
grand  air  with  which  he  leaves  his  servants  behind, 
as  one  should  say — Alexander  burning  his  bag 
gage  or  Julian  destroying  his  ships.1 

'  In  such  undertakings  European  domestics  are 
nothing  but  a  plague;  it  is  only  the  deepest 
interest  in  the  sights  to  be  seen  that  can  induce  the 
adventurer  to  bear  the  attendant  fatigues,  and  as 
these  unavoidable  hardships  are  not  nominated  in 
the  servants'  bond,  to  require  their  attendance 
would  be  a  gross  violation  of  the  principle  accord 
ing  to  which  no  one  should  demand  of  another 
what  that  other  is  under  no  obligation  to  perform. 
Such  expeditions  are  strictly  individual  undertak 
ings.  While  they  last  there  is  no  such  thing  as 
rank  or  caste.  In  the  face  of  primitive  nature  every 
one  is  a  primitive  man  ;  and  only  fiery  will  of  one's 
own  can  induce  the  participant  to  endure  danger 
and  toil.  If  a  man  wishes  to  engage  in  such  adven 
tures,  he  ought  to  make  up  his  mind  that  all 

1  Aug.  Civ.  Dei,  v.  21  :  Fretus  securitate  victoriae  [apostata 
Julianus]  naves  quibus  victus  necessariusportabatur  mcendit. 


4/O  MA  XI MIL  I  A  N  ; 

personal  considerations  are  at  an  end,  that  each 
individual  is  to  be  thrown  upon  his  own  strength 
and  sense,  and  that  a  cool  egotism  is  the  only  law 
in  force.  He  who  is  not  willing  to  put  his  shoulder 
to  the  wheel,  to  be  his  own  protector;  he  who  looks 
to  others  for  help,  had  better  stay  at  home.  He 
who  wants  to  penetrate  into  the  secrets  of  nature, 
as  she  has  been  reigning  undisturbed  since  crea 
tion's  dawn,  must  have  two  stout  legs,  two  strong 
arms  and  a  clear  head ;  he  must  mark  out  his  aim 
distinctly  and  turn  neither  to  the  right  hand  nor  to 
the  left.'  Indeed  he  luxuriated  in  this  self-reliance, 
and  in  the  same  connection  he  says — at  least  in 
effect : 

'  When  a  man  is  born  to  a  position  which  exposes 
him  to  the  nuisance  of  having  about  him  forever 
and  ever  an  ex-officio  buzz-buzz  of  obsequious 
assistance  and  tutelary  protection;  when  a  man 
from  his  cradle  has  had  somebody  to  chew  for  him 
— as  nurses  do  for  babies — somebody  to  show  him 
how  to  walk,  show  him  how  to  pronounce ;  when 
the  iron  rails  of  etiquette  mark  out  the  method 
ical  line  on  which  he  is  to  roll  along,  it  is  a 
real  blessing  to  such  a  man,  if  he  has  blood  in 
his  "veins,  to  get  into  situations  in  which  his  sole 
and  only  footing  is  his  own  strength  and  his  own 

will In  the  perfumed  drawing-rooms  at 

home  this  tendency  will  be  called  a  mania  for 
adventures ;  but  I  think  that  such  adventures  are 
very  wholesome  for  the  development  of  character, 
nay,  are  a  necessity  to  vigorous  natures  that  desire 
to  work  themselves  out  of  an  enervating  life.  If 
you  never  have  occasion  to  endure  toils  and  danger, 


HIS    TRAVELS  AND   HIS    TRAGEDY.        4/1 

when  extraordinary  events  turn  up,  as  they  do  even 
in  the  course  of  an  ordinary  life,  you  are,  without 
any  fault  of  your  own,  weak  in  body  and  unstrung 
in  soul.' 

Such  passages,  which  we  might  multiply  if  we 
chose,  show  plainly  enough  that  Maximilian  con 
sidered  himself  in  training  for  great  events ;  he 
knew  his  life  was  to  be  no  ordinary  one  ;  a  revolu 
tion  such  as  had  raised  his  brother  to  the  throne, 
might  at  any  time  call  the  brilliant  liberal  Archduke 
to  take  the  reins  of  the  Austrian  Empire,  or,  per 
haps,  even  then  the  vision  of  Transatlantic  glory 
was  hovering  before  his  poetic  eye.  The  man  who 
sent  out  the  Novara  to  carry  the  Austrian  flag  once 
more  around  the  world,  had  doubtless  had  many  a 
dream  of  renewing  the  glories  of  his  line  beyond 
the  water.  Read  in  this  light,  we  cannot  smile  at 
the  record  of  his  early  fancies,  his  first  movements 
of  ambition,  when  he  stands  a  boy  of  nineteen  at 
the  head  of  the  magnificent  flight  of  stairs  at  Ca- 
serta  and  thinks  how  pleasant  it  must  be  to  look 
down  on  the  rest — '  foremost  of  all — the  sun  of  the 
firmament ';  when  he  moralizes  by  the  coffins  of 
Ferdinand  and  Isabella,  and  remembers  that '  in 
all  Spain  he  was  the  next  of  kin  to  the  poor  dead 
sovereigns,  nearer  than  the  rulers  and  princes  of 
the  land,  and  that  had  it  not  been  for  Charles  II, 
our  race  would  yet  be  sitting  on  the  sunny  throne '; 
when  he  gazes  at  the  regal  insignia  of  Ferdinand 
the  Catholic,  and  bitterly  asks  the  sexton  if  they 
were  to  be  had  for  money.  '  With  proud  covetous- 
ness  and  yet  with  a  sad  heart,  I  laid  my  hands  on 
the  golden  circlet  and  the  once  mighty  sword.  It 


472   '  MAXIMILIAN; 

would  be  a  fair  and  brilliant  dream  for  a  descend 
ant  of  the  Spanish  Habsburgs  to  brandish  the  one 
in  order  to  gain  the  other.' 

But  while  the  dreams  of  young  ambition  are  not 
without  their  interest,  there  are  other  indications  of 
more  direct  bearing  on  the  career  of  the  future  Em 
peror.  There  is  something  peculiarly  fateful  in  his 
longing  for  America — something  strangely  proph 
etic  in  his  words,  that  '  he  was  the  first  man  of  his 
house  to  go  forth  into  the  new  world,  and  that  too 
with  the  firm  conviction  that  the  end  was  not  yet.' 
But  other  youths  have  dreamed  their  day-dreams 
of  glory  and  waked  up  to  the  soberest  prose,  and 
for  one  presentiment  fulfilled  there  are  thousands  of 
false  conceptions.  More  important  in  our  eyes  are 
those  expressions  which  furnish  the  clue  to  par 
ticular  lines  of  conduct.  Some  affect  to  believe 
that  if  Maximilian's  poetic  nature  had  not  received 
a  definite  impulse  from  the  vigorous  character  of 
his  wife,  the  Archduke  would  be  this  day  at  Mir- 
amar  gazing  out  at  his  beloved  Adriatic,  or  else 
sunning  himself  in  some  far-away  nook  in  the 
tropics.  Far  more  momentous  than  the  assump 
tion  of  the  Mexican  Empire  was  the  management  of 
it;  and  we  think  that  we  can  find  foreshadowed  in 
these  airy  sketches  of  travel,  the  policy,  or  want  of 
policy,  or  conflict  of  policies,  that  marked  his  hand 
ling  of  the  clerical  question.  It  is  well  known  that 
Maximilian  was  called  to  the  throne  by  the  Clericos, 
accepted  it,  as  they  believed,  in  their  interest,  was 
solemnly  charged  by  the  Pope  with  the  protection 
of  the  rights  of  the  Holy  See,  and  yet  immediately 
upon  his  accession  broke  with  the  leading  men  of 


HIS    TRAVELS  AND   HIS    TRAGEDY.       473 

the  Church  party,  and  in  his  endeavors  to  nation 
alize  and  liberalize  his  government,  alienated  his 
original  supporters,  and  then,  by  a  sudden  change 
of  plan,  which  is  attributed  to  the  prevailing  influ 
ence  of  skilful  ecclesiastics,  threw  himself  a  corps 
perdu  into  the  arms  of  the  Clericals. 

Let  us  see  if,  without  any  affectation  of  a  '  con 
scientious  analysis  ',  we  can  find  in  his  own  recorded 
views  any  clue  to  this  vacillating  conduct.  But 
first  let  us  carefully  distinguish  between  the  church 
party  and  the  church.  They  run  parallel  to  a  cer 
tain  extent :  they  do  not  coincide.  The  party  of 
Dios  y  orden  would  naturally  be  composed  in  large 
measure  of  the  more  earnest  Catholics.  The  party 
that  disgraces  the  legend  of  Libertad  e  Independencia 
would  naturally  embrace  all  the  infidel  elements  of 
the  population.  But  the  fight  was  really  about 
the  Church  property.  The  Clericos  determined  to 
regain  the  control  of  their  immense  domain,  the 
Liberals  as  earnestly  determined  to  appropriate  the 
last  candlestick  and  the  last  pyx. 

Now,  so  far  as  the  religious  element  is  involved, 
everybody  knows  that  Maximilian  was  a  Catholic, 
an  earnest  Catholic,  by  education,  by  tradition,  by 
temperament.  Infidelity  could  find  no  lodgment  in 
the  soul  of  such  a  loving,  glowing  nature.  To  him 
'  an  atheist  is  horrible,  a  she-atheist  loathsome '. 
He  delights  in  the  recognition  of  God,  and  scourges 
this  *  lean,  dry -boned  century  '  of  ours  for  its  want 
of  faith.  He  laments  that  the  beautiful  old  custom 
of  grace  at  meat  has  died  out  in  Catholic  countries, 
'  as  fashion,  the  only  religion  of  the  educated 
classes,  forbids  us  to  show  our  fellow-man  that  we 


4/4  MAX  I  MIL  I  A  N-  ; 

think  occasionally  of  the  old-time  God  '.  Often  and 
over  again  does  he  take  up  the  cudgels  for  the  '  old 
half-pay  piety  ' — die,  alte  pensionnirte  Religiositat — 
and  claim  for  religion  the  motive  power  of  all  civil 
isation.  But  he  is  not  satisfied  with  these  general 
terms.  He  is  specifically  and  enthusiastically  a 
Catholic — a  Roman  Catholic,  temporal  power  and 
all.  '  You  can  imagine  my  intense  excitement ', 
says  the  boy  of  nineteen,  '  at  seeing  Gaeta,  this 
harbor  in  which  the  bark  of  St.  Peter  cast  anchor 
to  seek  protection  against  the  storms  of  the  world. 
Now  the  wide-opened  gates  of  hell  thought  they 
had  gained  the  victory  over  the  glittering  tiara ; 
now  they  thought  the  head  of  Christendom  had 
fallen  never  more  to  rise  ;  but  amid  murky  clouds 
and  fearful  lightning  there  came  a  mighty  peal  out 
of  the  heavens,  and  the  vile  slaves  of  the  Prince  of 
this  world  trembled  as  they  heard  a  voice  saying 
unto  them  :  Tu  es  Petrus  ',  etc.  Especially  does 
this  fervent  devotion  come  out  in  the  sketch  entitled 
'A  Bit  of  Albania ',  in  which  he  gives  an  account  of 
his  mission  to  protect  Catholics  who  were  suffering 
under  the  Turkish  rule ;  but  we  have  already 
allowed  our  extracts  to  encroach  too  much  on  our 
allotted  space  and  can  find  no  room  for  diffusive 
specimens.  Salient  enough  is  his  antagonism  to 
Protestantism,  and  we  cannot  forbear  presenting 
one  little  piece  of  youthful  philosophizing,  which  we 
leave  with  our  readers  for  amusement  or  for  edifica 
tion,  as  the  case  may  be.  '  Interesting', — he  writes 
at  Messina,  in  1852, — 'interesting  is  the  white 
marble  pulpit  in  cinque  cento  style,  for  its  artistic 
execution  as  well  as  for  the  heads  of  Mohammed, 


HIS    TRAVELS  AND   HIS    TRAGEDY.       4?$ 

Luther,  Calvin,  and  Zwingli,  by  which  it  is  sup 
ported.  That  these  are  historical  portraits  I  cannot 
guarantee;  that  the  cicerone's  idea  in  baptizing  them 
so  would  be  a  highly  original  one,  is  not  to  be 
denied.  A  mute  collection  of  professors  of  false 
creeds,  over  whose  heads  the  word  of  God  thunders 
daily !  It  sounds  paradoxical,  indeed,  perhaps  too 
severe,  if  I,  speaking  merely  as  an  observer,  con 
fess  that  in  this  company,  Mohammed  seems  to  me 
the  most  important.  The  prophet  of  Mecca,  with 
his  southern  fire,  kindled  into  enthusiasm  for  his 
own  faith,  and  created  a  grand  popular  religion 
based  on  feeling  and  heart,  not  on  intellect.  Luther, 
Calvin,  and  Zwingli  merely  broke  up  by  the  spirit 
of  protest  a  religion  in  which  men  could  find  peace 
on  earth.'  But,  as  we  have  already  intimated, 
Maximilian's  faith  did  not  bind  him  to  reactionary 
views  ;  nor  does  he  deem  it  a  derogation  from  his 
respect  for  the  Church  to  stigmatize  the  abuses 
which  he  finds  in  her  shadow.  To  him  these  abuses 
are  in  her  shadow,  and  not  in  her  light ;  and  he 
would  have  opened  his  eyes  in  amazement  if  any 
Protestant  divine,  when  preaching  his  annual  ser 
mon  on  the  Apocalyptic  couple  known  as  the  Man 
of  Sin  and  the  Scarlet  Woman,  had  quoted  in  vindi 
cation  of  his  cause  the  Archduke's  rhetoric  against 
the  Inquisition,  or  his  rebuke  of  the  clergy  of  Brazil. 
Such  abuses  are  rife  enough  in  Mexico,  if  one- 
fourth  of  M.  Domenech's  piquancies  are  to  be 
believed ;  and  the  moral  aspect  of  the  Church 
party  could  not  have  been  very  inviting  to  the 
fastidious  Austrian  Prince.  But  it  was  certainly 
not  the  alluring  virtues  of  the  Liberals  that  made 


476  MAXIMILIAN; 

Maximilian  change  his  course  so  soon  after  his 
accession  ;  for  that  course  was  doubtless  marked  out 
in  his  own  mind  before  he  left  Miramar.  He  had 
deceived  himself  into  a  belief  that  the  party  which 
called  him  to  power  was  susceptible  of  expansion 
into  a  nation ;  for  we  can  hardly  suppose  that  he 
was  cheated  by  the  popular  vote  any  more  than  he 
was  by  the  *  ghost  of  a  junta '.  It  was  not  that  he 
betrayed  his  party,  but  that  he  attempted  to  raise 
his  party  with  him  to  a  higher  platform.  It  was  a 
fixed  principle  with  him,  and  one  to  which  he 
recurs  frequently,  that  *  Princes  should  stand  above 
parties,  for  all  parties  in  a  well-regulated  state  ought 
to  be  subject  to  them.  Princes  who  are  partisans  ', 
he  says,  *  must  not  be  astonished  if  they  fall  with 
their  party.'  It  was  on  this  principle  that  he. acted, 
hoping  to  nationalize  his  cause  without  doing  any 
real  injustice  to  his  party.  Feeling  that,  as  the 
chosen  of  the  nation,  though  only  the  chosen  in 
theory,  it  behooved  him  to  be  a  national  man,  he 
had  no  other  course  open  than  to  shake  off  the 
party  ties  that  bound  him.  How  immensely  diffi 
cult  the  situation  was,  may  be  seen  from  the  fact 
that  Maximilian  is  blamed,  now,  for  not  sticking  to 
his  party,  and  now  for  sticking  to  it.  '  He  ought 
to  have  formed  a  truly  national  party,'  says  one. 
'  That  is  the  very  thing  he  tried  to  do,  and  ought 
by  no  means  to  have  attempted,'  says  another. 
'  Maximilian's  confirmation  of  the  sales  of  Church 
property  was  a  ruinous  measure.'  '  Maximilian's 
revision  of  the  sales  of  Church  property  was  a 
ruinous  measure.'  Alas  !  for  the  poor  man's  motto, 
Equitad  en  lajusticia,  with  its  high-sounding  impos- 


HIS    TRAVELS  AND   HIS    TRAGEDY.       477 

sibility,  which  reflects  so  plainly  the  noble  balancing 
rather  than  the  noble  balance  of  the  unfortunate 
prince.  The  mistakes  which  he  made  in  the  man 
ner  of  carrying  out  his  great  plan  of  nationalizing 
his  cause — even  if  the  plan  itself  was  not  a  mistake 
— are  evident  enough ;  and  to  every  one  we  might 
attach  a  motto  from  his  own  writings.  '  Princes 
should  never  forget  that  the  persons  of  their  suite 
have  a  double  importance :  first  as  tentacles  to  feel 
and  absorb  the  ideas  and  opinions  of  the  outside 
world,  and  in  the  second  place  as  a  sign  by  which 
the  contents  of  the  shop  are  judged ';  and  yet  the 
men  who  surrounded  him  were  either  too  much 
out  of  sympathy  with  the  outside  world,  or  else  too 
busy  replenishing  their  inside  world,  to  serve  as 
tentacles  for  anything  but  spoons,  or  as  a  sign  of 
any  other  than  a  pawnbroker's  shop.  '  Clemency 
at  the  wrong  moment  is  weakness,  and  nothing 
avenges  itself  so  speedily  as  weakness ';  and  yet 
from  a  movement  of  sentimental  generosity,  he 
connived  at  the  escape  of  Porfirio  Diaz,  without 
whose  aid  '  the  grand  old  Indian  '  might  be  smoking 
his  cigar  to-day  at  Washington  and  not  in  the  City 
of  Mexico.  '  He  only  is  followed  who  can  com 
mand  ';  and  yet  he  thought  to  win  over  Juarez  and 
the  most  respectable  of  his  party,  by  a  decree  which 
was  a  complimentary  order  of  the  day  in  honor  of 
his  antagonist,  and  which  was  received  with  shouts 
of  derision  by  all  factions.  But  it  is  not  generous, 
and  what  is  more  to  the  dispassionate  observer,  it 
is  not  just,  to  press  such  points.  Maximilian's 
cause  was  doomed  by  the  fall  of  the  Southern  Con 
federacy.  Napoleon  had  missed  his  great  chance, 


478  MAXIMILIAN; 

and,  cool  player  as  he  was,  he  withdrew  his  stakes 
instead  of  sending  good  money  after  bad.  '  I  am 
swindled  ',  Maximilian  is  reported  to  have  said,  when 
Napoleon  announced  the  withdrawal  of  his  troops, — 
'  I  am  swindled.  There  was  a  formal  agreement 
between  the  Emperor  Napoleon  and  myself,  with 
out  which  I  should  never  have  accepted  the  throne  ; 
an  agreement  which  guaranteed  to  me  absolutely 
the  assistance  of  the  French  troops  until  the  end  of 
1868.'  '  He  who  breaks  oaths  ',  says  the  Archduke 
in  one  of  his  aphorisms,  '  gets  broken  himself.' 
But  prophetic  comfort  at  such  moments  is,  at  best, 
but  faint.  Had  Maximilian  seen  with  American 
eyes,  he  would  not  have  troubled  himself  about 
reviving  the  charms  of  Miramar  at  Chapultepec. 
Not  even  M.  Keratry's  '  Confederate  General 
Slaugter  with  his  army  of  25,000  men*  could  have 
saved  the  Empire — no,  not  even  if  General  *  Slaugter  ' 
had  recovered  the  '  h '  so  necessary  to  his  martial 
name,  and  if  his  division  had  decupled  itself  to  the 
respectable  proportions  which  it  assumes  on  the 
page  of  the  documentary  Frenchman.  Without  a 
powerful  military  support  from  abroad,  Maximilian 
could  not  hope  to  maintain  the  balance  between  the 
two  parties ;  or  rather,  if  we  use  his  own  language, 
to  put  himself  above  all  parties  ;  and,  that  military 
support  withdrawn,  he  had  to  choose  between  abdi 
cation  and  thorough  identification  with  his  old 
party.  It  was  a  bitter  thing  to  give  up  his  great 
experiment — to  make  so  pitiful  an  end.  He  had 
said  himself  that '  when  a  man  has  played  his  part 
he  ought  to  leave  the  stage ';  but,  as  if  in  anticipa 
tion  of  this  blank  result,  he  had  also  written  those 


HIS    TRAVELS  AND    HIS    TRAGEDY.       479 

memorable  words  :  '  It  is  a  good  thing  to  look  for 
ward  in  the  beginning  of  your  career  to  a  great 
future :  better  still,  with  a  great  past  behind  you, 
and  strong  in  the  present  around  you,  to  go  for 
ward  to  a  yet  more  brilliant  future :  fearful,  on  the 
contrary,  to  be  conscious  of  a  great  past  and  to 
have  no  future  left/  And  it  is  to  the  feeling  em 
bodied  in  these  sentences  that  Maximilian's  critic, 
M.  Keratry)  attributes  his  final  and  fatal  resolution. 
In  view  of  future  contingencies,  he  could  not  con 
sent  to  annihilate  all  hope  of  a  higher  career  by  a 
confession  of  nullity.  But  was  this  all  ?  Was 
there  no  motive  at  work  besides  the  calculation  of 
his  own  political  prospects  ?  Was  he  nothing  but 
an  adventurer,  who  thought  that  the  acceptance  of 
the  throne  was  a  personal  speculation,  and  regarded 
the  people  of  Mexico  merely  as  the  form  of  the 
speculation ;  or  did  Maximilian  really  believe  he 
owed  this  people  the  sacrifice  which  his  enemies 
suppose  he  made  to  his  ambition  or  to  his  vanity  ? 
Maximilian  undertook  his  task  in  no  childish 
spirit,  and,  fully  conscious  of  the  duties  which  he 
had  assumed,  he  worked  with  untiring  energy  at  all 
the  details  of  administration.  His  life  as  a  ruler 
was  a  life  of  toil  and  self-denial.  When  the  first 
marked  reverses  came,  he  wrote  (January  6,  1866), 
'  I  know  that  I  have  accepted  a  task  of  singular 
difficulty ;  but  my  courage  is  equal  to  sustaining 
the  burden,  and  /  will  go  on  to  the  end'  And  when 
it  became  evident  to  him  that  he  was  to  be  deserted 
by  his  great  ally,  he  still  refused  to  entertain  the 
thought  of  failure,  and  showed  '  an  energy  that  only 
increased  with  adversity '.  And  now  that  the  chances 


480  MAX  I  MI  LI  A  N  ; 

were  hopelessly  against  him,  can  we  believe  that  there 
was  no  higher  motive  at  work  than  personal  pride  ? 
Can  we  believe  that  Maximilian  was  so  completely 
duped  by  the  desperate  Clericos  ?  Leave  a  margin 
for  both  these  factors,  and  there  is  room  enough 
for  the  sacred  sense  of  duty — duty  to  the  country 
of  his  adoption,  duty  to  those  who  called  him  to 
the  throne.  Are  we  such  strangers  to  faithfulness 
that  we  cannot  understand  how  men  can  be  true  to 
a  cause  foredoomed  ?  Tirer  son  epingle  du  jeu  is 
fair  advice  at  times  in  its  way,  but  in  a  crisis  of  fate 
it  is  not  the  height  of  sublimities. 

But  we  have  insensibly  glided  from  the  sunlight 
of  Maximilian's  travels  into  the  penumbra  of  his 
tragedy,  and  one  of  the  projects  conjured  up  at  the 
close  of  his  reign  to  conceal,  rather  than  to  postpone 
the  end,  reminds  us  to  return.  Most  of  our  readers 
remember  that  there  was  much  talk  of  a  Congress 
of  Notables  who  were  to  be  convoked  from  all  ends 
of  the  Empire,  who  should  represent  all  shades  of 
opinion,  and  who  should  elect  Maximilian  Presi 
dent,  if  the  restoration  of  the  republican  form  of 
government  were  resolved  on.  Of  course,  the 
project  was  utterly  impracticable,  and  even  if  the 
assembly  had  been  held,  what  chance  was  there  for 
the  foreign  prince  against  a  native  thief?  '  Death  to 
foreigners ! '  is  a  cry  which  Maximilian  must  have 
heard  in  Italian.  Muerte  a  los  extranjeros  is  not 
much  more  musical  in  manly  Spanish  than  Morte 
ai  forestieri  in  soft  Tuscan.  And  as  we  think  of 
this  singular  failure  to  appreciate  the  bent  of  the 
Mexican  temper,  we  go  back  to  the  conception  of 
the  French  Intervention,  which  took  its  rise  in  the 


HIS    TRAVELS  AND   HIS    TRAGEDY.       481 

very  doctrine  which  was  set  at  naught  by  the  pro 
posers  of  this  Congress.  '  Nations  and  languages 
against  dynasties  and  treaties  ',  says  Max  Miiller ; 
'  this  is  what  has  remodelled  and  will  remodel  still 
more  the  map  of  Europe ';  and  living  as  we  do, 
according  to  our  Max,  '  in  the  century  of  King 
Humbug',1  the  battle-cry  is  as  good  as  another, 
certainly  better  than  that  other  slogan  of '  manhood 
and  brotherhood  ',  which  gets  its  form,  if  not  its 
warrant,  from  the  mistranslation  of  a  phrase  in  the 
Greek  Testament.2  Now  Napoleon's  avowed  object 
in  undertaking  the  Mexican  expedition  was  to 
restore  to  the  Latin  race  on  this  side  of  the  water 
its  power  and  its  prestige,  and  so  to  check  the  inva 
sions  of  the  Anglo-Saxons.  Of  course  France  was 
to  reap  profit  and  glory  from  this  restoration,  but 
we  do  not  believe  that  the  '  Latin  race '  was  a  mere 
figure  of  speech  in  the  eyes  of  Napoleon.  '  Every 
man  ',  says  his  unfortunate  protege,  '  has  his  private 
madness ;  if  he  were  without  it,  he  would  not  con 
tribute  as  a  motor  to  the  progress  of  the  world '; 
and  the  Latin  race  may  be  Napoleon's  crotchet. 
Or  we  may  perhaps  still  better  account  for  this 
infatuation  by  the  common  experience  that  men 
who  have  had  much  demonstrative  evidence  of  the 
power  of  phrases  are  apt  themselves  to  be  misled 
by  a  phrase,  and  we  need  not  be  surprised  to  find 
the  shrewd  calculator  the  dupe  of  his  own  arith 
metic.  But  who  was  the  man  that  Napoleon 

1  Wir  leben  im  Jahrhunderte  des  gekronten  Humbugs. 

2  The  famous  cry,  'Am  I  not  a  man  and  a  brother?'  clearly 
goes  back  to   St.   Paul's   *  Men   and   brethren',   which   is,  of 
course,  a  mistranslation. 


482  MAXIMILIAN; 

selected  as  the  representative  of  this  Latin  idea,  the 
standard-bearer  of  this  Latin  movement  ?  The  most 
thoroughly  German  prince  in  Europe — German  in 
his  tastes,  in  his  habits,  in  his  prejudices,  in  his 
sentimentality,  in  his  'many-sidedness';  a  German 
of  the  Germans,  nay,  more  than  a  German,  and 
never  more  of  a  German  than  when  he  criticises 
his  own  people.  'It  is  only  when  one  travels 
through  the  wide,  wide  world  that  he  comes  to  a 
realizing  sense  of  the  sad  fact,  how  little  the  German 
is  honored,  how  he  lacks  everything  that  is  neces 
sary  for  grand  political  measures,  and  how  he  plays 
everywhere  an  exceedingly  mediocre  part ;  nay, 
how  he  abases  himself  to  be  the  servant  of  others, 
to  be  the  footstool  of  shrewder  men.  The  German 
will  not  guide  the  fates  of  the  world  so  long  as  he 
continues  to  be  the  mere  philosopher,  so  long  as  he 
wears  out  his  intellect  with  unpractical  theories ; 
and,  instead  of  firing  his  heart  with  pride  and 
enthusiasm,  rocks  it  asleep  into  a  sickly  sentimen 
tality.  The  Germans  are  the  best  of  poets ;  the 
Germans  are  unsurpassable  musicians  and  scholars ; 
they  shine  in  glee-clubs  and  poetic  coteries,  and 
show  skill  in  everything  that  adorns  life  ;  but  while 
thus  engaged  they  miss  the  main  thing,  and  when 
once  in  a  while  they  come  together  to  consult  about 
their  own  political  existence,  they  are  too  apt  to 
deal  in  mere  theoretical  stuff  and  nonsense.'  In 
the  same  spirit  of  naive  self-criticism,  he  divides 
his  travelling  fellow-countrymen  into  the  two 
untranslatable  classes  of  Bummler  and  Philister; 
and  as  the  term  Philister  approaches  '  fogy ',  and 
Bummler  hovers  between  '  loafer '  and  'flaneur ', 


HIS    TRAVELS   AND   HIS    TRAGEDY.       483 

we  may  well  agree  with  him  that  these  are  not  very 
imposing  extremes.  Especially  sickened  was  he 
by  finding  that  the  Germans  forget  their  home  so 
soon,  their  language  so  soon  ;  and  again  and  again 
he  pauses  in  his  description  of  the  glories  of  the 
tropical  world,  to  express  his  disgust  at  the  German 
emigrants,  who  do  not  even  teach  their  children 
German,  so  that  'the  tow-headed  little  Teutons  can 
talk  nothing  but  a  snuffling  Portuguese.  His  native 
tongue  he  loved  with  a  fervor  rare  in  the  race.  A 
simple  Guten  Morgen,  as  it  greeted  his  ear  on  the 
South  American  Cachoeras,  a  toast  in  broken  Ger 
man  from  his  kind  host  in  Gibraltar,  went  straight 
and  sunk  deep  into  his  heart.  This  man,  so 
intensely  German,  was  the  prince  selected  for  a 
'  Latin  '  people.  And  how  did  he  like  the  '  Latins  '  ? 
And  first,  of  the  French.  Toward  the  French  he 
entertained — if  we  are  to  judge  by  his  '  Sketches  ' — 
a  decided  antipathy,  and,  as  he  himself  says,  '  anti 
pathy  is  further  from  friendship  than  is  hate '.  His 
admiration  of  Napoleon  was  purely  personal,  and 
in  no  wise  extended  to  the  grande  nation  with  its 
gloire  and  its  elan  and  its  drapeau  civilisateur  and 
its  mission  civilisatrice.  The  disgust  of  the  French 
literary  gentry  at  the  discovery  of  this  ingratitude 
is  almost  comic.  Of  course,  they  console  them 
selves  for  their  '  disillusionment '  by  reflecting  on 
the  number  of  times  the  French  had  drubbed  the 
Austrians,  and  find  it  after  all  quite  natural  that  a 
scion  of  the  House  of  Habsburg  should  not  be  cor 
dially  in  love  with  his  conquerors ;  but  really  they 
were  not  quite  prepared  for  such  manifestations. 
And  of  these  manifestations  there  is  no  end.  '  Was 


484  MAXIMILIAN; 

there  ever  a  woman  so  unfortunate  as  Maria  The 
resa's  lovely  daughter  ?  And  the  people  that  broke 
this  flower  is  called  the  chivalric  !  How  do  these 
two  things  tally  ? '  '  Thank  God,  French  will 
vanish  more  and  more  in  Vienna,  as  the  Emperor, 
with  a  just  self-respect,  discourages  the  use  of 
French  in  conversation.'  In  Spain  he  exclaims,  in 
his  admiration  of  national  costumes,  '  Happy  the 
land  in  which  Romance  has  not  been  quite  suffo 
cated  by  French  fashion  ';  and  again  he  moralizes 
over  an  engraving  after  Eugene  Sue's '  Wandering 
Jew '  which  he  found  in  a  humble  posada :  '  So 
the  Golden  Peninsula  too  has  been  overrun  by  the 
poison  of  France,  which,  like  the  glittering,  voluble 
drop  of  mercury,  turns  the  noble  metal  into  a  dull, 
grey  mass.'  A  bitter  vein  shows  itself  throughout 
his  trip  to  Algiers,  and  a  pang  of  mortification 
shoots  into  his  gay  style  as  he  catches  sight  of  the 
French  fleet,  which  he  knew  too  well  from  the  time 
of  the  blockade  of  Venice.  No  wonder  that  a  '  con 
scientious  analysis '  of  these  sketches  has  raised 
doubts  the  most  grave  in  the  minds  of  illustrious 
Gallic  critics  as  to  Maximilian's  sanity,  and  that 
Keratry  begins  to  understand  why  Maximilian 
made  it  a  rule  to  appear  in  public  as  rarely  as  pos 
sible  with  Frenchmen  in  his  suite.  But  if  he  does 
not  disguise  his  antipathy  to  the  leading  represen 
tative  of  the  so-called  Latin  race,  neither  does  he 
conceal  his  contempt  for  two  others — the  Italian 
and  the  Portuguese.  Of  the  Portuguese  language 
he  has  a  horror,  which  he  tortures  his  own  flexible 
tongue  to  express  :  '  He  who  has  not  heard  Portu 
guese  does  not  know  how  the  devil  talks  with  his 


HIS    TRAVELS  AND   HIS    TRAGEDY.        485 

dam,  for  such  sniffling  and  snuffling,  grunting 
and  scrunching,  such  a  thick-tongued,  flat-palated 
nasality,  such  a  combination  of  all  low,  vulgar, 
unpleasant  sounds,  could  have  been  invented  only 
by  the  devil  in  his  wrath ', '  a  language  better  fit  for 
bellowing  servants  of  Baal  than  for  the  worship 
of  God.'  Of  the  Portuguese  themselves  he  has 
nothing  more  kindly  to  say  than  this  :  '  We  found 
the  people,  as  everywhere  in  Portugal,  sneakingly 
obliging  (kriechend  freundlich),  awkward,  lazy  and 
stupid.  Of  the  revolting  ugliness  of  this  race, 
which  oscillates  between  the  mulatto  and  the  ape, 
it  is  impossible  to  form  an  adequate  conception.' 
Toward  the  Italians  he  feels  as  an  Austrian  prince 
would  naturally  feel,  and  while  his  severest  thrusts 
are  aimed  at  Southern  Italy,  he  is  often  sweeping 
enough  in  his  condemnation.  Nor  was  his  experi 
ence  as  viceroy  in  Lombardy  and  Venice  calcu 
lated  to  lessen  his  bitterness,  nor,  we  may  add,  to 
heighten  his  confidence  in  his  capacity  for  man 
aging  a  member  of  the  Latin  race.  Called  to  the 
viceroyalty  in  the  spring  of  1857,  he  found  his  two 
years'  apprenticeship  an  annoying  struggle  between 
his  liberal  tendencies  and  the  direction  in  which  he 
was  forced  to  move  by  the  repressive  policy  of  the 
Austrian  government.  He  came,  eager  to  con 
ciliate,  hoping  to  win  these  rebellious  subjects  of 
Austria  to  a  true  allegiance.  The  populace  shouted, 
but  the  lovers  of  Italy,  the  Italian  nobles,  in  short, 
the  national  party,  remained  cold,  and  all  the 
'  liberal  sentiments '  which  were  attributed  to  him 
would  not  make  them  forget  that  their  ruler  was  a 
hated  '  Tedesco  '.  He  went  away,  to  be  succeeded 


486  MAXIMILIAN; 

by  Gyulai — and  Victor  Emmanuel ;  he  went  away  to 
repeat  his  experiment  in  the  art  of  government  and 
to  fail  more  fatally.  Now,  although  he  may  have 
hoped  to  do  good  in  Italy  he  never  liked  the 
people,  and  indeed  seemed  to  glory  in  their  hatred 
to  his  line  as  a  compliment  to  the  power  of  the 
Habsburgs.  And  so  violent  is  his  prejudice  that  it 
extends  even  to  the  Italian  language,  and  faint  is 
the  praise  that  the  tongue  of  Dante  and  Machiavelli 
and  Filicaja  finds  at  his  hands.  '  It  is  a  strange 
thing,  this  Italian.  No  language  so  low  and  vulgar, 
especially  when  it  comes  blurting  out  of  the  mouth 
of  a  genuine  Italian ;  then  again  it  sounds  like  the 
childish  babble  of  a  squeaking  Punch,  but  some 
times  it  has  chords  that  force  their  way  with  might 
to  the  heart  like  the  tones  of  an  yEolian  harp.'  And 
singularly  enough,  the  words  of  which  he  says  this 
are  such  as  might  suit  his  own  tombstone  and  his 
own  creed :  Pregate  per  un  infelice,  che  implora 
pace  e  misericordia.  But  while  he  might  pray  for  a 
dead  Italian  he  could  not  compliment  a  living  one, 
except  at  the  expense  of  his  nation.  '  The  best  thing 
about  him  is  that  you  can't  recognize  in  him  the 
Southern  Italian.'  '  No  population  in  Europe, 
except,  perhaps,  the  Laplanders,  so  low  down,  so 
demoralized  as  the  Sicilians.'  '  What  we  Germans 
in  our  humility  call  a  "  house ",  the  bombastic 
Italian  straightway  entitles  a  "  palace ".'  '  This 
enervated  people  makes  a  disgusting  pastime  out 
of  everything,  even  out  of  death.'  But  if  Maxi 
milian  dislikes  the  French,  sneers  at  the  Portuguese, 
and  abhors  the  Italians,  he  makes  up  in  a  measure 
for  all  this  ill-feeling  toward  the  '  Latin  race '  by  an 


HIS    TRAVELS    AND   HIS    TRAGEDY.        487 

admiration  of  the  Spaniard  that  amounts  to  '  fanati 
cism ',  as  one  of  his  French  critics  justly  remarks. 
Everything  suits  him  in  Spain ;  he  likes  the  type  of 
the  people ;  he  is  enamored  of  the  national  game  of 
bull-fighting ;  he  adores  the  national  costume,  the 
climate,  the  scenery,  the  olla  podrida ;  and  it  was 
doubtless  the  Spanish  element  of  Mexican  popula 
tion  that  constituted  the  attraction  of  his  people. 
Toward  the  Indians  he  was  cold  ;  his  observation 
in  Brazil  had  cooled  all  the  romance  that  he  had 
drawn  in  from  Cooper's  novels ;  and  his  French 
critics  emphasize  especially  as  one  cause  of  his 
failure  his  neglect  of  the  Indian  element.  But 
Frenchmen  are  not  good  judges  of  race,  and  show 
an  incredible  philosophy  in  the  matter  of  amalga 
mation.  Those  nations  that  keep  their  blood  pure, 
that  refuse  to  blend  with  an  inferior  stock,  are  those 
that  are  destined  to  the  mastery ;  and  '  Latin ' 
America  owes  most  of  its  misery  to  the  degradation 
of  race.  There  are  some  thirty-two  mixtures  in 
Peru,  each  with  its  distinct  name ;  and  in  his  travels 
Maximilian  met  with  the  following  combination, 
which  a  Frenchman  like  Michelet  might  admire, 
which  the  good  sense  of  a  man  of  Germanic  stock 
can  regard  only  as  a  curiosity  not  deserving  of 
repetition  :  *  Antonio  was  an  interesting  fellow  from 
an  ethnographic  point  of  view.  The  son  of  a  white 
Brazilian  and  a  full-blood  Indian  woman,  there 
fore  of  an  olive  complexion,  with  abundant  black 
curls  and  a  tolerably  full  beard,  he  married  a 
mulatto  woman.  The  result  of  this  four-fold  cross 
is  a  strikingly  handsome  youth  of  seventeen  years, 
as  tall  and  slender  as  a  poplar,  with  soft  features  and 


488  MAXIMILIAN; 

sparkling  eyes.  His  complexion  is  not  red,  not 
black,  not  olive,  not  bronze,  not  light,  not  dark,  a 
mixture  of  all  conceivable  colors.  Corinthian  brass 
may  have  looked  that  way — copper,  gold  and 
bronze  all  mixed  together.'  But  we  of  the  United 
States  are  fast  developing  in  this  direction,  and  if 
report  tells  the  truth,  the  crosses  in  California  of 
Indian,  Chinese,  Negro,  Kelt  and  Anglo-Saxon 
promise  results  which  will  throw  utter  contempt 
upon  Maximilian's  specimen  of  mixed  breed. 

Before  we  turn  from  these  '  Sketches  of  Travel ',  we 
have  yet  to  notice  one  point  which  we  have  pur 
posely  reserved  for  the  last.  We  have  yet  to  gather 
together  Maximilian's  political  confession  of  faith. 
He  is  commonly  classed  as  a  Liberal,  and  it  is  said 
that  during  his  viceroyalty  in  Italy  he  indulged  in 
expressions  which  would  have  cost  any  other  man 
ten  years  at  Spielberg  or  Olmiitz.  But  his  Liber 
alism  is  far  from  being  democracy.  The  one-man 
power  is  his  ideal.  *  A  government  that  will  not 
and  cannot  learn  the  voice  of  the  governed  is 
rotten  and  hastening  to  its  fall,'  but  the  government 
to  be  a  government  must  be  in  the  hands  of  one. 
'  The  people ',  says  he,  '  as  a  mass,  have  no  under 
standing,  but  an  unfailing  instinct ;  if  the  govern 
ment  guides  that  instinct  to  gradual  self-develop 
ment,  we  have  peace  and  prosperity.  If  the  instinct 
is  systematically  disowned  for  the  momentary  satis 
faction  of  the  policy  of  an  hour,  there  follows,  as 
you  would  naturally  expect,  colossal  absurdity  and 
revolution.  To  recognize,  try,  and  guide  this  in 
stinct  requires  understanding,  and  this  is  given  only 
to  the  individual.'  On  this  determining  influence 


HIS    TRAVELS  AND   HIS    TRAGEDY.        489 

of  the  individual  he  is  especially  emphatic.  '  The 
life  of  nationalities  develops  itself  in  a  mighty  irre 
pressible  stream.  Truly  great  men  fixed  their  eyes 
on  this  stream,  studied  its  strength  and  direction, 
and  then  dug  a  channel  for  it  to  run  in  for  the 
future.  So  they  made  themselves  masters  of  the 
situation,  and  stamped  their  characters  on  the  cen 
turies.  Common  people  sit  on  the  bank  of  the 
stream  and  make  moan  over  its  strength  and  speed  ; 
madmen  dam  it  up,  are  washed  away  by  it,  and 
leave  as  a  legacy  an  inundation/  Through  all  this 
rhetoric,  and  there  is  more  of  it,  his  ideal  comes  out 
plainly.  His  system  is  the  imperial ;  he  believes  in 
the  people  as  he  believes  in  an  elemental  force ;  it 
is  the  hero  alone  that  can  guide  that  force  into  a 
healthful  and  useful  activity.  He  is  a  hero-wor 
shipper,  and  to  some  extent  a  self-worshipper,  for 
he  thought  that  he  recognized  in  himself  a  guiding 
spirit,  a  man  of  working  power,  a  pfurfoios  dvfo. 
Keratry  says  that  what  the  Mexicans  wanted  was  a 
Louis  XI  or  a  Cromwell  marching  straight  to  his 
goal,  his  mind  fixed  on  the  country  before  bestow 
ing  a  thought  on  individuals,  and  not  'this  chiv- 
alric,  undecided  character'.  And  yet  no  more 
ardent  admirer  of  vigorous,  trenchant  action  than 
this  man,  whose  softness  and  gentleness  are  said  to 
have  been  his  ruin ;  no  more  ardent  apostle  of  Car- 
lyle's  Gospel  of  Might.  Harsh  and  stern  historical 
figures  have  a  peculiar  fascination  for  him ;  and 
after  giving  an  account  of  some  extravagances  of 
that  genius  of  blood-drinking,  Don  Pedro  the  Cruel, 
he  stops  to  tell  us  that  '  this  Pedro  the  Cruel  and 
Philip  the  Second,  the  man  of  iron,  of  all  the 


490  MAXIMILIAN; 

sovereigns  of  Spain  are  those  that  enjoy  the 
greatest  popularity;  although  Pedro  was  terrible 
and  Philip  inexorable,  yet  they  left  great,  historical 
memories  in  the  land ;  and  consequently, they  are  the 
right  sort  of  kings  in  the  eyes  of  the  Spaniards.'  In 
Portugal  he  pays  his  tribute  to  Pombal,  the  famous 
Prime  Minister,  in  these  words :  '  Pombal  was  a 
tyrant  who  incited  to  what  was  good  and  vigorous, 
and  that  is  the  man  that  degenerate  nationalities 
need.'  But  bold,  incisive  action,  even  in  an  inferior 
sphere,  commanded  his  regard.  So  in  Algiers  he 
fell  in  love  with  a  native  tiger  in  the  French  service, 
and  tells  us  more  of  '  Yusuf '  than  of  anything  else 
seen  in  his  trip.  So  in  his  '  Bit  of  Albania  '  he 
dwells  with  peculiar  complacency  on  the  character 
of  his  pilot  Vassili  (Basilius),  a  Greek  corsair,  whose 
exploits  in  the  Greek  war  of  liberation  were  of  a 
character  to  dampen  the  blaze  of  enthusiastic  sym 
pathy  with  the  rebellious  Candiotes.  This  Vassili, 
'an  earnest  man '  with  much  'forceful'  directness 
and  '  freedom  from  cant '  in  the  '  conduct  of  him  ', 
used  to  rehearse  with  great  glee  the  roasting  alive 
of  two  white  prisoners  and  one  black,  and  wind  up 
the  tale  of  the  Turks  he  had  killed  by  adding  in  his 
broken  Italian  :  Ho  amazza  un  Ebreo  che  non  cunta 
— *  I  have  kill  a  Jew,  which  no  count.'  But  all  this 
might  be  attributable  to  the  boyish  taste  for  pirates 
and  robber-chieftains  ;  and  it  might  seem  unfair  to 
insist  too  much  on  such  testimony :  only  the  same 
views  recur  at  a  riper  age.  In  his  '  Sketches  of 
Travel  in  Brazil ',  he  tells  us  what  Brazil  wants  ;  and 
gives  us  to  understand  what  he  would  do  if  he 
were  Pedro  the  Second.  Of  course  he  would  have 


HIS    TRAVELS  AND    HIS    TRAGEDY.        491 

emancipated  every  slave  at  once,  and  have  reduced 
the  country  to  a  howling  wilderness  ;  and  then  he 
would  have  made  the  Empire  a  power  by  reducing 
everybody  else  to  slavery.  '  What  Brazil  wants  is 
a  regenerator  of  iron  firmness,  a  wise  tyrant  who 
bases  his  principles  on  equity  \equitad  en  lajusticia], 
treats  with  no  party  [breaks  with  the  Clericos\  and 
in  case  of  necessity  interposes  with  iron  severity 
[decree  of  October  3,  1865].  He  would  have  the 
sad  fate  of  not  being  understood  by  his  times,  of 
being  hated  by  his  fellows  in  Brazil ;  but  history 
would  assign  him  a  lofty  place  among  those  who 
build  for  the  future :  his  name  would  interweave 
itself  with  all  the  new  ideas  of  Brazil,  and  would  be 
blessed  by  coming  generations.'  Who  can  doubt 
that  such  was  his  conception  of  the  part  which  he 
had  to  play  in  Mexico  ?  Do  we  not  see  in  the 
decree  of  outlawry  which  condemned  every  dissi 
dent  taken  in  arms  as  a  brigand,  do  we  not  see  in 
that  famous  decree  the  '  inexorable  interposition  '  of 
which  he  speaks  ?  Keratry  says  that  the  decree  was 
his  death.  Domenech  says  that  after  a  little  while 
it  was  perfectly  null.  Like  so  many  of  his  measures 
it  was  potent  only  for  his  own  ruin.  Maximilian, 
indeed,  seems  to  have  lacked  the  hardness  of  mental 
or  moral  constitution  necessary  for  his  own  ideal  of 
a  ruler  in  that  unhappy  land ;  and  his  apologists 
must  content  themselves  with  showing  that  he 
wanted  what  he  lacked  ;  while  his  critics  may  say, 
if  they  choose,  //  riosait  pas  ce  qu'il  voulait. 

Of  these  critics  the  most  formidable  we  have 
seen  is  M.  de  Keratry — most  formidable,  because  he 
possesses  the  gift  of  disenchantment,  because  he  lets 


492  MAXIMILIAN; 

in  the  white  light  of  fact  on  the  decorations  of  the 
theatre,  and  dissipates  the  nimbus  which  invests  the 
distant  and  elevated.  Of  course  he  writes  well  (the 
Emperor  is  the  only  Frenchman,  and  he  a  French 
man  by  indulgence,  who  is  allowed  to  lumber),  and 
his  array  of  unpublished  documents  is  imposing. 
But '  General  Slaugter  and  his  twenty-five  thousand 
Confederates '  first  gave  us  pause ;  and  then  this 
astounding  piece  of  intelligence,  which  will  be  news 
indeed,  to  most  of  our  readers,  that  'the  rebels  of 
the  South  were  impatient  to  kill  the  republican  form 
of  government  in  order  to  inaugurate  a  military 
dictatorship,  the  future  head  of  which  had  opened 
negotiations  on  the  subject  in  the  city  of  Mexico 
itself.'  It  is  dangerous  for  a  man's  credit  to  be  too 
well-informed ;  and  we  must  confess  that  our  faith 
was  somewhat  shaken  by  this  exhibition  of  too  pro 
found  a  knowledge  of  the  affairs  of  the  Southern 
Confederacy.  In  short,  we  suppose  that  Keratry 
had  a  thesis  to  maintain,  and  not  a  result  to  deter 
mine.  The  latter  should  precede  the  former ;  but 
every  writer  knows  how  common  self-deception  is 
on  this  score,  and  we  do  not  think  that  we  are  doing 
injustice  when  we  say  that  the  object  of  the  book  is- 
to  justify  Marshal  Bazaine,  to  damn  Napoleon,  and 
to  represent  Maximilian  as  a  poetic  adventurer, 
whose  transcendental  nature  was  not  fit  for  the  rude 
task  he  had  undertaken,  whose  noble  qualities  of 
head  and  heart  were  neutralized  by  an  unsteady 
will,  whose  very  tragedy  lacked  its  appropriate 
close.  '  He  should  have  died  sword  in  hand,'  says 
the  dramatic  Frenchman.  Will  he  say  here  too, 
'  //  n* os ait  pas  ce  qu'il  voulait '  ?  It  may  be  an  acci- 


HIS    TRAVELS  AND   HIS    TRAGEDY.        493 

dent,  but  we  must  confess  to  a  strange  suspicion 
when  we  saw  the  names  of  the  same  famous  Leipzig 
firm,  Duncker  and  Humblot,  on  the  covers  of 
Keratry's  book  and  of  Maximilian's  sketches.  Can 
it  be  that  the  publications  are  part  of  the  same  plan  ? 
Is  Keratry  the  interpreter  of  Maximilian's  char 
acter,  the  suggestive  commentator  of  Maximilian's 
writings  ?  There  is  much  outward  mourning  at 
the  Austrian  court,  and  the  journals  tell  us  of  the 
deep  grief  of  the  Emperor.  But  the  stories  of 
those  early  quarrels,  the  wide  discrepancy  of  the 
characters  of  the  two  brothers,  the  troubles  of  the 
vice-regal  period,  the  intrigues  of  the  court  against 
Maximilian  as  Admiral,  the  forced  renunciation  of 
the  right  of  succession,  the  hateful  dispatch  of 
Eloin,  which  more  than  hints  at  the  abdication  of 
Francis  Joseph,  and  the  counter-despatch  of  the 
Austrian  government,  which  distinctly  forbids 
Maximilian  to  return  to  Austrian  soil  with  his 
Imperial  title — all  these  things  force  themselves  in 
unavoidable  association  on  the  mind ;  and  some 
times  it  almost  seems  as  if  this  monument  to  a  dead 
rival  were  meant  as  much  in  rebuke  of  his  preten 
sions  as  in  honor  of  his  genius.  If  this  can  be  true, 
the  tragedy  has  a  deeper  depth — a  deeper  darkness. 
But  our  task  has  reached  its  limit.  With  the 
dramatic  accessories  of  the  final  scene  we  have 
nothing  to  do.  The  details  of  the  nineteenth  of 
June  are  fresh  in  the  memory  of  every  reader,  and 
we  shall  not  attempt  to  make  amends  for  our  short 
comings  in  the  more  difficult  task  of  tracing  the 
obscure  lines  that  formed  the  net-work  of  Maxi 
milian's  fate  by  the  cheap  assemblage  of  uncertain 


494  MAXIMIL  IAN  ; 

statements,  of  harrowing  particulars.  Let  the 
protagonist  of  our  tragedy  die  behind  the  scenes. 
Himself  has  said, '  Expectation  is  worse  than  reality. 
Death  itself  is  not  as  terrible  as  it  is  represented  '; 
and,  indeed,  the  real  tragedy  is  the  life. 

In  a  previous  study  we  ventured  to  call  up  the 
shade  of  the  last  of  the  heathen  emperors — the  shade, 
and  only  the  shade,  for  the  real  substance  eluded  our 
necromancy.  But,  after  all,  the  uncertain  wavering 
of  the  outline  may  have  been  the  best  portraiture  of 
a  man  in  whom  the  elements  of  strength  and  weak 
ness,  greatness  and  littleness,  were  so  strangely 
blended ;  and  if  we  have  failed  again  to  bring  out 
a  clear,  living  image  of  a  more  modern  hero,  the 
failure  may  in  like  manner  be  due  to  the  mistiness 
of  the  subject  as  well  as  to  the  feebleness  of  the 
incantation ;  for  the  two  heroes  are  alike ;  and 
across  the  interval  of  fifteen  centuries  the  two  great 
visionaries  speak  to  each  other  in  their  sleep,  the 
Romanticist  on  the  throne  of  the  Caesars  and  the 
Romanticist  on  the  throne  of  the  Montezumas. 
True,  the  dreamers  are  less  like  each  other  than 
their  dreams.  The  one  so  cold  with  all  his  fire,  so 
hard  with  all  his  cultivation,  so  unpoetic  with  all  his 
enthusiasm  :  unfortunate,  yet  so  little  loved  ;  great, 
yet  so  grudgingly  admired.  The  other,  a  man 
whose  sympathetic  nature  envelops  us  with  love 
even  against  our  will ;  whose  errors,  grave  as  they 
may  be,  bribe  us  into  apologies,  whose  genius  lights 
up  the  common-places  of  existence  with  its  own 
aureole,  gilds  promise  into  seeming  performance, 
and  crowns  with  the  halo  of  martyrdom  the  divine 
doom  of  him  that  taketh  the  sword.  And  yet, 


HIS    TRAVELS  AND   HIS    TRAGEDY.        495 

unlike  as  are  the  two  men  in  their  persons,  they  are 
so  much  alike  in  their  historical  relations  that  a 
comparison  is  not  only  suggested,  but  demanded. 
The  grandson  of  Constantius  Chlorus  and  the 
descendant  of  Charles  the  Fifth  were  both  reac 
tionists  :  the  one  consciously,  the  other  uncon 
sciously.  Both  believed  themselves  divinely  com 
missioned  to  be  the  regenerators  of  an  empire. 
Both  served  an  apprenticeship  to  the  business  of 
government.  Both  were  crossed  and  thwarted  by  a 
malign  court  influence  ;  and  if  Julian's  career  in  Gaul 
was  far  more  brilliant  than  Maximilian's  in  Italy, 
we  must  at  least  in  all  fairness  remember  that  Maxi 
milian  was  more  hampered  than  Julian,  and  make 
some  little  offset  for  the  activity  of  the  Imperial 
Admiral  who  prepared  for  Austria  the  glory  of 
Lissa.  Both  showed,  in  the  actual  administration  of 
an  empire,  a  strange  mixture  of  practical  good  sense 
with  theoretical  absurdity ;  and,  what  is  the  strangest 
part  of  the  parallel,  they  both  incorporated,  the  one 
into  his  politics,  the  other  into  his  religion,  elements 
of  fatal  incongruity.  The  chosen  of  the  clerical 
party,  Maximilian  was  penetrated  with  liberal 
notions :  the  longed-for  of  the  pagan  priests,  Julian 
devoted  himself  to  a  reformation  which  was  tanta 
mount  to  destruction.  Both  perished  in  pursuit  of 
a  phantom ;  both  deceived  by  lying  oracles ;  one 
certainly  betrayed,  the  other  possibly  assassinated  ; 
and  yet,  the  end  of  both  was  not  without  honor.  In 
the  month  of  June,  the  chivalric  Emperor  of  Mexico 
fell  with  his  faithful  followers.  In  the  month  of 
June,  the  chivalric  Caesar  fell  for  his.  Yet  few 
mourned  for  the  one ;  how  many  are  sorrowing  for 


496  MAXIMILIAN. 

the  other  !  Few  care  what  dreams  of  glory  filled 
the  brain  of  the  heathen  Emperor ;  what  words  of 
madness  or  wisdom  escaped  his  quivering  lips. 
That  last  cry  of  Maximilian's  loving  human  heart 
finds  its  echo  everywhere,  in  every  ear,  in  every 
heart — except  the  heart  and  the  ear  of — Lotte  ! . 


OCCASIONAL  ADDRESSES 


ON  THE  PRESENT  ASPECT  OF 
CLASSICAL  STUDY.1 

The  chance  that  made  me  the  first  professor 
appointed  to  a  chair  in  this  university  has  made  it 
my  duty  to  represent  the  School  of  Letters  on  this 
festal  day,  which  has  been  chosen  for  the  commem 
oration  of  the  first  completed  decennium  of  our 
existence  as  an  institution.  The  work  of  the  uni 
versity,  so  far  as  it  can  be  expressed  by  lectures 
and  by  publications,  by  the  number  of  teachers  and 
of  students,  by  the  hours  spent  in  laboratory  and 
seminary,  is  all  of  record.  Judged  even  by  the 
census  standard  of  facts  and  figures,  it  will  be 
granted  that  what  has  been  done  here  in  the  last 
ten  years  does  not  fall  short  of  the  standard  which 
was  set  up  in  1876.  Less  measurable,  but  not  less 
certain,  are  the  indications  of  our  influence  on  the 
whole  circle  of  university  work  in  America,  and 
whatever  we  may  have  failed  to  do,  we  have  assur 
edly  not  failed  in  rousing  to  greater  vigilance  and 
stimulating  to  a  more  intense  energy  in  other  parts 
of  the  wide  field,  and  whether  in  the  way  of  ap 
proval  or  in  the  way  of  protest,  our  example  has 
made  for  life  and  growth  and  progress.  This  life 
and  growth  and  progress  have  found  a  material 
expression  in  the  erection  and  equipment  of  model 

1  Address  delivered  on  the  tenth  anniversary  of  the  Johns 
Hopkins  University,  April  26,  1886. 


5OO  CLASSICAL    STUDY. 

laboratories  for  biology,  chemistry,  physics.  De 
partments  that  are  less  tangible  in  their  material 
and  in  their  methods  have  little  to  show  the  visitor 
except  a  few  books  and  a  goodly  number  of  men 
—  ardent  students,  who  are  busy  with  old  problems 
and  new,  enriching  themselves  with  the  spoils  of 
the  past,  laying  up  store  for  those  who  are  to  come 
after  them,  in  the  present  neither  envious  nor  afraid. 
As  to  this  whole  department  of  letters,  then,  that 
department  which  has  naturally  fallen  most  under 
my  own  observation,  I  can  truly  say  that  the  healthy 
increase  in  the  schools  of  language  and  literature  is 
something  that  has  transcended  my  most  sanguine 
expectations.  In  numbers  we  outrank  many  of  the 
minor  German  universities,  and  in  the  more  abstruse 
and  recondite  studies,  such  as  Assyrian  and  San 
skrit,  we  hold  our  own  with  some  of  the  leading 
schools  of  Europe.  As-  for  our  American  sisters, 
it  is  not  so  easy  to  separate  graduate  work  from 
undergraduate  work  in  other  American  universities 
as  it  is  here,  and  hence  the  comparison  of  numbers 
might  not  be  fair,  and  might  be  misinterpreted  ;  and 
instead  of  emphasizing  too  much  our  large  number 
of  graduate  students,  it  may  be  better  to  say  in 
regard  to  all  the  schools  of  the  country  in  which 
higher  work  is  done,  that  we  count  their  success  as 
our  success,  for  we  are  all  helpers  one  of  another. 
And  here  I  would  take  occasion  to  echo  the  wish — 
which  I  have  often  heard  expressed  of  late, — that 
the  university  departments  in  all  American  institu 
tions  of  learning  might  be  so  organized  that  students 
could  pass  from  one  to  the  other  in  the  prosecution 
of  a  line  of  study  just  as  they  do  in  Germany,  much 


CLASSICAL   STUDY.  5<DI 

to  the  advantage  of  their  breadth  of  vision,  their 
freedom  from  local  or  personal  influence.  For  my 
own  part,  I  have  always  congratulated  myself  that  I 
was  brought  under  the  influence  of  three  distinct 
and  markedly  distinct  philological  schools,  Berlin, 
Gottingen,  and  Bonn,  and  I  have  no  doubt  that 
when  the  time  comes,  there  will  be  a  university 
exchange  that  will  help  us  even  more  than  the 
measure  of  it  that  we  have  thus  far  enjoyed.  We 
then  of  the  department  of  letters  have  our  success 
to  speak  of  on  this  day  when  a  little  '  self-esteem 
grounded  on  just  and  right'  may  be  pardonable, 
if  not,  as  Milton  says,  profitable.  But  it  is  a  success 
that  carries  with  it  the  gravest  responsibilities.  The 
ark  we  bear  contains  more  sacred  vessels  than  it 
held  when  we  set  out,  and  on  an  occasion  like  this 
it  becomes  us  not  only  to  exchange  hearty  con 
gratulations  that  we  have  been  helped  thus  far  on 
our  way,  but  to  renew  our  hold  with  greater  vigor, 
and  to  plant  our  feet  more  firmly,  with  a  clearer 
view  of  the  path  to  be  trod  and  the  burden  to  be 
borne. 

To  some,  I  do  not  know  to  how  many,  certainly 
to  some  of  those  whom  I  am  addressing,  the  special 
line  of  work  to  which  my  own  life  has  been  devoted 
may  seem  to  have  had  its  day ;  and  to  plan  for  the 
future  of  Greek  is  to  plan  for  an  elaborate  structure 
on  the  foundation  of  some  Table  Rock,  destined  at 
no  distant  time  to  fall  and  disappear  in  the  restless 
current  of  modern  life.  A  monument  was  erected 
some  years  ago  to  the  memory  of  the  last  old 
woman  that  spoke  Cornish  ;  and  it  would  require  no 
great  stretch  of  imagination  on  the  part  of  some  of 


5O2  CLASSICAL   STUDY. 

our  friends  to  fancy  that  some  youth  may  be  present 
here  to-day  who  shall  live  to  see  the  cremation  of 
the  last  successor  of  Sir  John  Cheke  on  this  side  of 
the  Atlantic,  of  the  last  old  woman,  trousered  or 
untrousered,  that  shall  have  discharged  the  office 
of  a  Professor  of  Greek  in  an  American  university. 
People  who  have  reached  a  certain  age  and  have 
become  somewhat  reflective  and  prophetic  generally 
console  themselves  with  Hezekiah's  words.  But  I 
cannot  content  myself  with  the  thought  that  there 
will  be  peace  and  truth  in  my  days.  There  has 
not  been  much  of  either  of  these  commodities  in 
my  first  half-century,  and  I  do  not  expect  the  market 
to  be  glutted  with  them  in  my  second.  Surely  there 
is  no  sign  that  there  will  be  any  peace  about  Greek 
or  truth  about  Greek  in  any  period  that  I  can 
reasonably  hope  to  reach.  But  the  peace  and  the 
truth  that  may  be  denied  me  from  without  are 
vouchsafed  me  abundantly  from  within ;  and  while 
many  of  my  fellow-workers  are  in  woe  for  the  silver 
shrines  of  Diana,  and  mourn  for  the  abandonment 
of  Greek,  and  sorrow  that  the  trade  in  text-books 
languishes,  I  am  serenely  standing  where  I  stood 
many,  many  years  ago,  when  I  published  my  first 
article  on  the  *  Necessity  of  the  Classics  Y — a  title 
not  to  be  confounded  with  the  '  Necessities  of  the 
Classics  '  about  which  one  hears  far  too  much  ;  and 
I  still  live  in  the  abiding  assurance  that  what  is  in 
wrought  in  the  structure  of  our  history  and  our 
literature  must  survive  so  long  as  the  history  of 
our  race  and  the  history  of  our  language  shall  sur 
vive.  To  disentwine  the  warp  of  the  classics  from 

1  In  the  old  Southern  Review  for  July,  1854. 


CLASSICAL   STUDY.  503 

the  woof  of  our  life  is  simply  impossible.  One 
mediaeval  writer  every  one  must  know,  and  meas 
ured  by  modern  standards  Dante  was  not  a  classical 
scholar  of  the  first  rank ;  his  perspective  of  antiquity 
was  false,  his  estimate  of  the  poets  of  the  past  was 
far  from -being  just,  and  yet  what  is  Dante  if  you 
loosen  his  hold  on  the  classic  time?  I  will  not 
speak  of  Milton,  steeped  in  classic  lore;  I  will 
speak  of  Shakespeare.  None  but  those  who  have 
read  Shakespeare  with  the  eye  of  the  classical 
scholar  know  how  much  the  understanding  of 
Shakespeare  is  dependent  on  training  in  the  clas 
sics,  and  more  than  once  when  I  have  hesitated  as 
to  whether  it  was  pedantry  or  not  to  use  a  Greek 
word  in  my  English  discourse,  I  have  turned  to 
Shakespeare. 

Is  this  the  judgment  of  a  man  who  can  see  only 
through  his  own  narrow  casement  ?  Scarcely  had 
I  set  down  those  words  when  the  following  passage 
fell  under  my  eye.  It  is  to  be  found  in  the  recent 
introductory  lecture  of  the  Professor  of  Poetry  in 
the  University  of  Oxford.  '  The  thorough  study 
of  English  literature,  as  such — literature,  I  mean,  as 
an  art,  indeed  the  finest  of  the  fine  arts,  is  hopeless 
unless  based  on  an  equally  thorough  study  of  the 
literatures  of  Greece  and  Rome.  When  so  based, 
adequate  study  will  not  be  found  exacting  either  of 
time  or  of  labor.  To  know  Shakespeare  and  Milton 
is  the  pleasant  and  crowning  consummation  of 
knowing  Homer  and  ^Eschylus,  Catullus  and 
Vergil.  And  upon  no  other  terms  can  we.  obtain 
it.'1 

1  F.  T.  Palgrave,  Province  and  Study  of  Poetry. 


504  CLASSICAL    STUDY. 

To  be  sure  we  have  promise  of  mountains  and 
marvels  if  we  break  with  the  past.  What  satisfied 
us  in  our  boyhood  no  longer  suits  the  fastidious 
taste  of  the  present ;  and  the  Phoebus  Apollo  of  our 
youth,  clad  as  to  his  dazzling  shoulders  with  a  classic 
cloud,  is  shown  up  as  nothing  better  than  a  padded 
dandy.  Our  adored  Thackeray  is  no  longer  fault 
lessly  attired  in  a  garb  of  perfect  English,  he  is  simply 
a  stylistic  old  beau  ;  the  plots  in  which  we  once  took 
delight  are  nothing  but  vulgar  tricks,  and  the  lifting 
of  a  tea-kettle  lid  and  the  setting  down  of  the  same 
are  intrigue  enough  for  the  conduct  of  a  two-year 
long  novel.  All  this  new  literature  has  nothing  to  do 
with  the  classics.  Far  from  it.  And  yet  I  am  not 
at  all  shaken  by  the  self-satisfied  edicts  of  those  who 
rule  so  large  a  portion  of  the  reading  world,  and  I 
maintain  with  unwavering  confidence  that  all  healthy 
literature  must  be  kept  in  communion,  direct  or 
indirect,  with  the  highest  exemplars  of  our  Indo- 
European  stock ;  and  if  anything  could  prove  the 
necessity  of  a  return  to  healthy  human  nature,  with 
its  compassed  form,  its  fair  red  and  white,  it  would 
be  the  utter  wearisomeness  of  so  much  recent  fine 
writing,  in  which  there  is  no  blood,  no  sap,  nothing 
but  division  and  subdivision  of  nerve-tissue.  'A 
pagan  suckled  in  a  creed  outworn '  is  a  joy  and 
delight  in  comparison  with  the  languid,  invertebrate 
children  of  the  great  goddess  Anaemia. 

I  have  watched  with  much  interest  the  develop 
ment  of  the  study  of  artistic  composition  in  English 
during  the  last  few  years.  Indeed,  it  would  have 
been  necessary  to  stop  one's  ears  to  keep  out  the 
shrilling  cicada-sound  of '  art  for  art's  sake ',  and 


CLASSICAL   STUDY.  505 

all  the  theoretical  buzz  of  aesthetic  criticism.  The 
interest  has  not  been  unmingled  with  amusement 
because  the  apostles  of  progress  are  preaching  very 
old  doctrine — a  doctrine  which  I  shall  be  glad  to 
reinforce  so  far  as  I  can  before  I  acquit  myself  of 
this  function.  Art  for  art's  sake  involves  the  very 
hardest,  the  very  driest  study,  the  very  kind  of 
study  for  which  we  philologians  and  grammarians 
are  contemned.  The  accomplished  master  in  the 
Art  of  Dipping,  who  delighted  the  world  a  few 
weeks  since  by  his  '  Letters  to  Dead  Authors  ',  made 
his  swallow-wing  strong  in  the  larger  ether  of  the 
Elysian  fields ;  and  those  who  should  hold  him  up 
as  an  example  of  the  kind  of  classical  scholar  we 
ought  to  have,  little  know  to  what  severe  studies  is 
due  that  easy  grace.  It  is  so  cheap  to  talk  about 
gerund-grinding  and  root-grubbing,  as  if  gerund- 
grinding  did  not  lead  to  the  music  of  the  spheres 
and  root-grubbing  to  the  discovery  of  the  magic 
moly  that  guards  against  the  spells  of  Circe,  of 
'  euphrasy  and  rue ',  that  purge  *  the  visual  nerve '. 
He  who  neglects  the  elements  lacks  the  first  condi 
tions  of  the  artistic  life.  In  the  old  times  great 
artists  did  not  disdain  to  prepare  their  own  var 
nishes  and  the  old  paintings  stand  fresh  to  this  day, 
while  many  of  their  modern  rivals,  scarce  a  genera 
tion  old,  are  falling  into  decay  beyond  a  hope  of 
recognition.  The  fair  dream  was  embodied  in 
machine  pigments,  and  the  machine  pigments  flake 
off  and  with  them  the  fair  dream  vanishes.  If 
grammatical  research  is  pressed  with  regard  to 
truth,  to  that  which  is,  then  the  gerund-grinding,  as 
the  color-grinding,  not  only  has  its  warrant  in  itself 


506  CLASSICAL    STUDY. 

as  a  useful  exercise,  but  it  is  sure  to  be  available  for 
higher  purposes  ;  and  if  it  is  not  given  to  every  one 
to  make  use  of  grammatical  results  for  artistic  ends, 
still  no  organic  fact  is  without  its  value,  none  will 
fail  of  its  appropriate  place  in  the  completed  system 
of  art  as  of  science.  To  me,  as  an  ardent  lover  of 
literature,  as  one  who  was  led  through  literature  to 
grammar  and  not  through  grammar  to  literature, 
the  fairest  results  of  a  long  life  of  study  have  been 
the  visions  of  that  cosmic  beauty  which  reveals 
itself  when  the  infinitely  little  fills  up  the  wavering 
outline  and  the  features  stand  out  pure  and  perfect 
against  the  sky  of  God's  truth.  Now  for  the  study 
of  literature  as  an  art  we  have  everything  to  learn 
from  the  old  critics,  and  what  our  own  Sylvester, 
our  own  Lanier  have  re-discovered  as  to  the  science 
of  verse  is  a  chapter  from  antique  rhetoric.  Mr. 
Lowell  has  recently  pointed  out  the  great  secret 
of  Gray's  abiding  popularity.  That  consummate 
master  did  not  disdain  the  close  analysis  of  the 
sensuous  effect  of  sound,  and  the  melody  of  Cole 
ridge  is  due  in  a  measure  to  a  conscious  though 
fitful  study  in  the  same  line.  Of  late  an  author, 
whose  charm  of  style  was  first  appreciated  in  this 
country,  has  written  an  essay  in  which  he  applies 
phonetic  analysis  to  the  works  of  our  great  prose 
writers,  and  strikes  the  dominant  chord  of  what 
seems  unconscious  music.  The  essay  might  have 
been  written  in  the  beginning  of  the  first  century  as 
well  as  at  the  end  of  the  nineteenth,  and  have  been 
signed  Dionysius  of  Halicarnassus  as  well  as  Robert 
Louis  Stevenson. 

Whether,  then,  it  be  for  the  historical  unity  of  the 


CLASSICAL    STUDY.  507 

race,  whether  it  be  for  the  human  sanity  of  classical 
literature,  whether  it  be  for  the  influence  on  form 
either  as  example  or  precept,  there  is  no  danger 
that  the  ancient  classics  will  be  displaced  from  the 
list  of  studies  necessary  for  the  highest  and  truest 
culture.  Nor  do  I  think  that  the  so-called  hard  and 
dry  and  minute  research  in  this  and  cognate  prov 
inces  of  study  will  ever  be  abandoned  in  favor  of  a 
mere  bellettristic  phrasemongery  about  half-under 
stood  beauties.  What  is  hard,  what  is  dry,  what 
is  minute  depends  very  much  on  the  spirit  in  which 
it  is  approached.  Some  years  ago  I  attended  a 
lecture  by  a  great  master.  The  theme  was  the 
vanishing  of  weak  vowels  in  Latin.  Candor  com 
pels  me  to  state  that  although  I  pride  myself  on 
being  interested  in  the  most  uninteresting  things,  I 
should  have  chosen  another  subject  for  a  specimen 
lecture.  Candor  compels  me  to  state  also  that  I 
very  much  question  whether  the  illustrious  teacher 
would  accept  all  his  own  teachings  to-day,  such 
progress  do  grammarians  make  in  devouring  them 
selves  as  well  as  one  another.  I  was  much  struck 
with  the  tone  in  which  he  announced  his  subject. 
It  was  the  tone  of  a«man  who  had  seen  the  elements 
melt  with  fervent  heat,  and  the  weak  vowels  vanish 
at  the  sound  of  the  last  trump.  The  tone,  indeed, 
seemed  entirely  too  pathetic  for  the  occasion,  but 
as  he  went  on  and  marshalled  the  facts,  and  set  in 
order  the  long  lines  that  connected  the  disappear 
ance  of  the  vowel  with  the  downfall  of  a  nation 
ality,  and  great  linguistic,  great  moral,  great 
historical  laws  marched  in  stately  procession  before 
the  vision  of  the  student,  the  airy  vowels  that  had 


508  CLASSICAL   STUDY. 

flitted  into  the  Nowhere  seemed  to  be  the  lost  soul 
of  Roman  life,  and  the  Latin  language,  Roman 
literature  and  Roman  history  were  clothed  with  a 
new  meaning.  And  so  we  of  the  language  depart 
ments  do  not  intend  to  be  disturbed  in  our  work  by 
criticism  of  the  arid  details  of  our  courses ;  nor  on 
the  other  hand  are  we  unmindful  of  the  larger  and 
more  popular  aspects  of  the  wide  field  of  culture 
which  we  occupy.  There  is  no  form  of  art,  no  phase 
of  philosophy,  of  ethics,  no  development  of  physical 
science  that  is  alien  to  the  student  of  language,  and 
the  student  of  physical  science  in  his  turn  needs  the 
human  interest  of  our  study  to  save  his  life  from  an 
austere  and  merciless  quest  of  fact  and  principle  in 
a  domain  where  man  enters  only  as  a  factor  like  any 
other  factor.  But  first  and  last,  the  scientific  standard 
must  be  upheld  for  the  university  man,  be  he  a  student 
of  letters,  be  he  a  physicist;  and  that  standard  is  the 
absolute  truth,  the  ultimate  truth.  '  Nothing  imper 
fect  is  the  measure  of  anything ',  says  the  prince  of 
idealists.1 

1  Plato,  Rpb.  vi.  504  C,  areXes  yap  ovdfv  ovdevos  ptrpov. 


ON  THE  GREATNESS  OF  THE 
GRADUATE.1 

Our  President  has  requested  me  to  say  a  few 
words  to  the  new  graduates  of  the  Johns  Hopkins 
University,  and  our  President,  as  most  of  us  have 
found  out  by  this  time,  is  not  a  man  to  be  denied. 
A  gentle  but  fatal  insistence,  and  I  am  here ;  and 
yet  I  could  have  wished  that  he  had  waited  until 
next  year.     Then  I  should  at  least  have  known  how 
to   begin   my   speech.     Forty   years    would   have 
looked  down  on  me  from  the  apex  of  my  own  bach 
elor's  degree ;  for  forty  years  I  should  have  been 
sitting,  if  not  on  the  throne  of  Solomon,  at  least  on 
the  throne  of  one  who  is  wiser  than  Solomon — to 
begin  with ;  or  for  forty  years  I  should  have  been 
wandering  in   the  wilderness  of  '  practical  life  ',  of 
which  baccalaureate  orators  have  so  much  to  say. 
But  what  can  an  orator  do  with  the  number  thirty- 
nine  unless  he  takes  for  his  text  the  forty  stripes 
save  one,  which  have  indeed  a  certain  Scriptural 
sacredness,  and  unless  he  applies  the  trebly  unlucky 
three  times  thirteen  to  the  scourgings  of  life — those 
scourgingsthat  figure  in  the  Greek  motto  of  Goethe's 
autobiography : 

6  fir)  dapels  avdpwnos  ov  TraiSeuerm, 

'Address  to  the  Graduating  Class  of    1888   of   the   Johns 
Hopkins  University. 


510          GREATNESS   OF    THE    GRADUATE. 

or  as  it  might  be  translated  for  this  occasion  only, 

The  man  who  is  not  skinned  alive  gets  no  degree. 

But  the  '  scourgings  of  life '  would  not  be  a  cheerful 
theme  even  in  the  retrospect  for  such  a  time  as  this, 
and  I  will  not  seek  any  longer  for  personal  coinci 
dences  wherewith  to  begin  or  to  end  my  discourse. 
Whatever  changes  a  man  passes  through  only  to 
forget,  he  never  forgets  the  time  when  he  takes  an 
academic  degree,  and  the  mere  juggling  of  numbers 
has  nothing  to  do  with  this  Arcadian  fellow-feeling. 
He  who  has  never  known  it  is  poorer  by  a  peculiar 
experience.  We  talk,  and  talk  justly,  of  the  great 
university  of  life,  of  the  wider  and  deeper  culture 
that  men  often  get  without  the  college  walls ;  but 
after  all  there  is  something  apart  in  the  seclusion  and 
the  consecration  of  the  academical  novitiate,  whether 
spent  in  tending  the  seven  lean  kine  of  trivium  and 
quadrivium  or  in  the  piping  of  Major  and  Minor 
moods  in  the  green  pastures  of  the  Johns  Hopkins 
B.  A.  course,  or  in  the  long  wrestling  of  Principal 
with  Subordinate,  mother-in-law  against  daughter- 
in-law  in  our  happy  family  of  Ph.  D.'s.  In  any 
case  there  has  been  a  certain  overcoming,  a  certain 
endurance  of  boredom,  a  certain  compression  and  a 
certain  expression  that  go  to  make  a  mint-mark ; 
and  instead  of  falling  into  the  usual  vein  of  speakers 
on  such  occasions,  instead  of  telling  you  that  life 
has  much  worse  things  in  store  for  you  than  exami 
nations  and  lectures,  let  me  tell  you  honestly  that 
in  all  those  scourgings  of  life  of  which  I  have 
spoken  there  is  to  me  no  more  terrible  memory 
than  that  of  the  time  when  I  was  searched  to  the 


GREATNESS   OF   THE    GRADUATE.          511 

bottom  of  my  consciousness  as  to  the  exact  rela 
tion  of  two  words  in  the  Odes  of  Horace,  Lib.  I, 
Carm.  I,  or  when,  years  afterwards,  a  grim  inquis 
itor  wanted  to  know  all  about  all  the  Leges  Corneliae. 
So  far  from  telling  you  that  you  know  nothing  of 
the  burden  and  heat  of  the  day,  I  can  honestly  say 
that  the  mechanical  drudgery  of  the  school-task  and 
the  Tophetic  glow  of  the  examination-room  are  the 
worst  things  that  civilized  man  has  to  go  through, 
as  they  are  the  best  things  that  civilized  man  has  to 
go  through.  To  be  sure,  modern  theorists  tell  us 
that  learning  ought  to  be  made  delightful,  that  we 
ought  to  absorb  it  unconsciously,  that  the  teacher 
who  does  not  make  his  teachings  interesting  is  a 
failure,  and  so  on.  My  young  friends,  my  old 
friends,  teaching  is  a  surgical  process.  You  may 
administer  an  anaesthetic,  an  anodyne.  You  may 
perform  your  sleight-of-hand  trick  while  your 
patient  is  under  the  influence  of  laughing-gas,  but 
the  healthy  human  being  feels  the  after-effects,  and 
no  matter  whom  the  pupil  has  studied  under — 
momentous  preposition — he  has  had  to  endure,  and 
that  this  is  all  over  I  congratulate  you  most 
heartily.  You  will  find  people  enough  to  sneer 
at  the  college-bred  man.  It  is  a  sneer  begot  of 
envy.  Remember  that  and  take  comfort.  You 
will  find  people  mean  enough  to  ask  you,  as  I  was 
asked  when  I  took  my  Ph.  D.  degree  and  had 
attained  a  height  from  which  I  have  been  steadily 
declining  ever  since,  'What  are  you  going  to  be?' 
As  if  a  Ph.D.  degree  were  not  an  answer  to  all  that ! 
Never  mind.  Major  and  minor,  principal  and  sub 
ordinate,  can  never  vex  you  more,  for  you  are  free 


512          GREATNESS  OF   THE    GRADUATE. 

of  the  guild,  and  you  have  gained  your  freedom  by 
that  submission  to  law  wherein  alone  true  freedom 
resides.  Heaven  forbid  that  I  should  mar  your 
just  pleasure  by  telling  you  of  all  the  lions  in  the 
path.  The  lions  whose  mouths  you  have  already 
effectually  stopped  are  among  the  grimmest  you 
will  ever  have  to  encounter,  and  the  zeal  and  ear 
nestness  and  patience  with  which  you  have  under 
gone  the  heroic  tests  set  before  you  are  sufficient 
proofs  that  you  do  not  need  the  sermonizing  that 
men  in  my  position  think  themselves  qualified  to 
inflict  on  those  who  have  taken  the  first  great  step 
forward  to  active  life.  It  would  rather  become  us 
oldsters  to  ask  ourselves  whether  we  should  have 
done  as  well  in  your  case,  and  to  show  that  despite 
all  our  own  failures — most  of  which  the  Great 
Examiner  hides  until  we  graduate  from  this  world 
and  even  beyond — to  show,  I  say,  that  despite  all 
our  own  failures  we  have  sweetness  of  temper 
enough  left  to  rejoice  with  them  that  do  rejoice — 
ay,  and  justly  rejoice. 


POSTSCRIPT. 

In  spite  of  my  philosophical  and  impersonal  preface, 
as  I  look  through  the  sheets  of  this  collection,  I  am 
seized  with  a  sudden  fear  lest  worse  things  may  have 
escaped  me  than  the  omission  of  the  word  '  life '  after 
the  second  'public  and  private'  on  p.  22,  than  the 
trailing  '  h '  which  the  German  goddess  Hulda  has 
stolen  from  the  Hebrew  prophetess,  pp.  169,  185,  than 
the  second  '  Xerxes '  on  page  279,  for  which  read 
'  Nero ',  than  the  transfer  of  Sirmium,  p.  384,  from 
Pannonia  to  the  adjoining  province.  As  for  printers' 
errors,  I  notice  with  sadness,  tempered,  it  is  true,  by 
long  and  bitter  experience,  that  the  second  cv0a  on 
p.  1 7 1  has  lost  its  accent  despite  its  neighbor's  virtuous 
example,  that  a  sacrilegious  t  has  availed  itself  of  the 
cover  of  the  circumflex  to  creep  into  the  last  syllable, 
or,  to  keep  up  the  figitre,  into  the  oTrio-^o^o/uoy  of  the 
word  'ITJOOVS,  p.  1 8 1 ,  and  that  in  the  first  foot-note 
on  p.  209  '  Xanthippe '  has  needlessly  been  raised  to 
the  second  power. 

Aliter  non  fit,  Avite,  liber. 

B.  L.  G. 


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Gilders leeve,  B.L. 

Essays  and  studies, 
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